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OF THE 


UNIVERSITY | 


THE VITALITY OF 
PLATONISM 


AND OTHER ESSAYS 


CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
Hondon: FETTER LANE, E.C. 
C. F. CLAY, MANAGER 


€vinburgh: 100, PRINCES STREET 
Berlin: A. ASHER AND CO. 
Leipsig: F. AJ. BROCKHAUS 
few Work: G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS 
Bombay and Calcutta: MACMILLAN AND CO., Lo. 


All rights reserved 


THE VITALITY OF 
PLATONISM 


AND OTHER ESSAYS 


BY 


JAMES ADAM 


LATE FELLOW AND SENIOR TUTOR OF EMMANUEL COLLEGE, 
CAMBRIDGE 


EDITED BY HIS WIFE 


ADELA MARION ADAM 


Cambridge: 
at the University Press 


IQII 


Cambridge 


PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. 
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 


eee 


τοῖς 
φιλτάτοις ἐμοὶ 
CYNECTIOIC TE KAI ουὐντρὰπέζοιο, 
ΟΥ̓Κ ACHMOY πόλεως TIOAITAIC 
-EMMANOYHA, 
τύλε TO BIBAIAADION 
εὐμενὲς πὰρὰ EYMENOYC 


κεχὰριίοθω. 


εἰ μὲν φιλοςοφητέον, φιλοςοφητέον, Kal εἰ μὴ IAOCODH- 
TEON, φιλοοοφητέον᾽ TIANTWC ἀρὰ φιλοςοφητέον. 


(ARISTOTLE.) 


247023 


VI. 


CONTENTS 


The Vitality of Platonism 

The Divine Origin of the Soul . 

The Doctrine of the Logos in Heraclitus . 
The Hymn of Cleanthes 

Ancient Greek Views of Suffering and Evil 


The Moral and Intellectual Value of Classical 
Education 


104 


190 


213 


PREFACE 


HESE essays were read by my husband as 
papers or lectures on various occasions. The 
Divine Origin of the Soul was published in Cam- 
bridge Praelections, 1906, and The Moral and 
Intellectual Value of Classical Education in the 
Emmanuel College Magazine, Vol. vii. I have to 
thank the Syndics of the Cambridge University 
Press and the editor of the magazine respectively 
for their kind permission to reprint them. The 
Vitality of Platonzsm was read to the Classical 
Society at Aberdeen University in 1902, and to a 
similar society in Edinburgh in the following year. 
The Doctrine of the Logos tn Heraclitus is a paper 
read before the Oxford University Philological 
Society in 1906. The essay entitled The Hymn of 
Cleanthes contains the substance of three lectures 

᾿ delivered in 1906 at Westminster College, Cam- 
bridge, before a Summer School of Theology. The 
remaining essay on Anczent Greek Views of Suffering 
and Ev2l was the author’s last public lecture, which 


Vill Preface 


was given to the Vacation Biblical Students at 
Newnham College, Cambridge, in 1907, one month 
before his death. 

In preparing this volume for the press it has not 
seemed possible altogether to eliminate overlapping 
between the essays among themselves or with 
James Adam’s book on The Religzous Teachers of 
Greece. When ideas and illustrations recur, it is 
usually in a different setting, and they fulfil a special 
purpose in the separate essays. 

Dr Giles has been kind enough to read the 
proofs, and Mr Leonard Whibley to give advice 
concerning the MS and its arrangement. 

I have prefixed to the book the dedication and 
motto originally set before the last essay. It is 
fitting that the expression of my husband’s love for 
the college where he worked should introduce these 
echoes of his teaching. 


se eer 


May, 1911. 


THE VITALITY OF PLATONISM 


A distinguished philosopher, speaking of the 
educational value of Plato and Aristotle, remarked 
- on one occasion that he had grave doubts whether 

it was expedient to make men study “dead philo- 
sophies, imperfectly understood.” It might fairly 
be said in reply that no philosophic system which 
is worth studying at all has ever been perfectly 
understood, except, perhaps, by its inventor; and 
some have actually doubted whether Hegel was 
always intelligible even to himself. But it is a 
much more disputable assertion to say that Platonism 
is dead, and if one were to join issue with so bold 
an antagonist on his own ground and fight him with 
his own weapons, we should be tempted to maintain 
on the other hand that Platonism, so far from having 
joined the majority, is not even sickly or moribund, 
but rather the only philosophy which is really alive. 
Like Teiresias in the realm of shades, Plato, we 
might say, οἷος πέπνυται, τοὶ δὲ σκιαὶ ἀίσσουσι. 
But I am far from making any such reflection upon 
other philosophic systems, and will content myself 
,, with trying to show that the announcement of the 
death of Platonism is a little premature. 


A. E. I 


2 The Vitalty of Platonism 


It is at all events a curious and significant sign 
of Plato’s continued vitality that we often find 
modern philosophers displaying an almost pathetic 
anxiety to father their doctrines upon him. Take 
for example Lotze, who after explaining his 
own metaphysical principles, proceeds to identify 
them with the Platonic Ideas, which he interprets, 
as philosophers are apt to do, in the light of his 
own theory. The truth which Plato intended to 
teach, says Lotze, is no other than that which we 
have just been expounding, that is to say, the 
validity of truths as such, apart from the question 
whether they can be established in relation to any 
object in the external world, as its mode of being or 
not. I have elsewhere’ tried to show that Lotze’s 
application of his own metaphysical doctrines to 
those of Plato involves an entirely erroneous view 
of Plato's theory of Ideas: but it is a striking proof 
of the vitality of Plato’s authority and name that 
successive generations of idealists are so apt to 
shelter themselves beneath his wing. And if the 
influence of Plato’s teaching is still alive in modern 
philosophy, and affects, as in point of fact it does 
affect, nearly every revival of idealism, it is hardly 
less dominant in theology and religion. Some of 
the early apologists for Christianity, such as Justin 
Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen, show 
that they recognised and acknowledged the connec- 
tion between Platonism and the Christian faith when 

' Logit, E. T.? p. 210. 
* Adam, Republic of Plato, vol. ii. 169 f. 


Influence of Plato 3 


they speak of Greek philosophy as a preparation for 
Christianity, and assert, as Clement does, that Plato 
wrote by the inspiration of ἀοά--ἐπιπνοίᾳ Θεοῦ". 
Few writers have had more influence in shaping the 
course of theological thought in England than the 
Cambridge Platonists of the 17th century, Cudworth, 
John Smith, Nathanael Culverwel, and others ; and 
the fundamental principles of this school or band of 
thinkers were derived from a study of Platonism, 
which was uncritical indeed, and often mistaken, 
but always apprehended with the firmest grasp the 
central doctrine of Plato’s religious teaching, the 
essential divinity of the human soul. In a later 
generation Ackerman and Baur, in their treatises on 
the Christian elements in Plato, and on Socrates 
and Christianity, discussed the relationship between 
Platonism and Christianity with a keener insight 
and a surer criticism, and pointed out many striking 
coincidences between the two systems. And to take 
a still more recent example, Bishop Westcott, nearly 
all of whose theological writings are coloured by 
Platonism, has declared that the myths of Plato 
answered in the first place to Revelation, as an 
endeavour to enrich the store of human knowledge, 
and in the second place ‘“‘to the Gospel, as an 
endeavour to present, under the form of facts, the 
manifestation of Divine Wisdom.”...‘‘ Plato,” he says, 
“points us to St [οπη 
The stimulus exerted by Platonism on poets and 


1 Coh. ad Gent. 180 A, Migne. 
> Contemporary Review, τι. Ὁ. 480 f. 


4 The Vitality of Platonism 


artists has been hardly less remarkable. In spite 
of the severe and almost puritanical regulations by 
which Plato in the Republic tries to clip the wings 
of Poetry and Art, the artistic temperament has in 
all ages been powerfully attracted by his writings, 
and it is highly significant of the intellectual affinity 
between Plato and Ruskin that in drawing up a list 
of books worth reading Ruskin took his pen and 
wrote “Plato, every word.” The Platonic conception 
of an eternal self-existent principle of Beauty, stand- 
ing serene and changeless above all the fluctuations 
of fashion and taste, has proved an inexhaustible 
fountain of inspiration to some of the greatest 
painters and sculptors in the most flourishing and 
creative period of Italian art. Perhaps the most 
noteworthy example of the influence of Plato’s ideal- 
ism on the artistic imagination is that of Michael 
Angelo, who was a member of the Platonic Academy 
at Florence, and gives expression to the idea which 
vitalises all his greatest work in language which 
might have come from Plato himself. One of his 
sonnets, translated by Wordsworth, contains these 
truly Platonic lines :— 


Heaven-born, the Soul a heaven-ward course must hold’; 
Beyond the visible world she soars to seek 

(For what delights the sense is false and weak) 

Ideal Form?, the universal mould. 

The wise man, I affirm, can find no rest 


' Cf. Man is a φυτὸν οὐκ ἔγγειον, ἀλλὰ οὐράνιον. Plato, Zim. 
90 A. 
* Cf. Platonic Ideas. 


Hostility to Greek tdeas δ 


In that which perishes: nor will he lend 
His heart to aught which doth on time depend’. 


The fact is that Platonism, if we understand the ' 
word in a broad and literal, and not in a narrow or 
pedantic sense, is not yet dead, and cannot die, 
because its roots are struck deep in universal human 
nature. {It is true that in the popular language of 
his time Plato speaks of the barbarian as the natural 
enemy of Greece; it is true that he calls his own 
ideal republic emphatically a Greek city; but the 
animating spirit of his teaching, as we shall see, is 
the enthusiasm of humanity, and leaves no room 
for the artificial distinctions of barbarian and Greek, 
bond and free. To the most characteristic principles 
of Greek life and thought he is constantly opposed. 
The old and all but universal rule of pagan morality, 
“40 good to your friends, and evil to your foes” is 
attacked by him in the Repudfc and elsewhere’ with 
arguments based on a loftier view of man’s nature 
and work than anything which we meet with in 
Greek literature before his time, and the practical 
conclusions which he draws “that the good man 
never does evil to any,” “that it is better to suffer 
than to do wrong,” have justly been held to fore- 
shadow the Sermon on the Mount. ‘ Ye have heard 
that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, 
and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love 
your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good 

1 Cf. γένεσις as opposed to οὐσία, and time as opposed to 


eternity. See Plato, Rep. 509 B et passim. 
2 Rep. 335 A ff., γὼ 490, Gorg. 472 Ὁ ff. 


6 The Vitality of Platonism 


to them that hate you, and pray for them which 
despitefully use you and persecute you.” Plato does 
not go so far as this, but he is following the same 
road. /On questions like the training and work of 
women, the true functions of statesmanship, the 
theory and practice of education, and many others 
which might be named, Plato is equally hostile to 
prevalent Greek ideas. But in nothing does he 
display so marked an antagonism to contemporary 
thought and feeling as in his attitude to Greek 
theology and religion. Starting from the funda- 
mental principles that the divine nature is good, 
immutable, and cannot lie, he attempts to show, 
with more refinement perhaps, but hardly less 
vigour, than Tertullian, that the Olympian theology 
violates these canons at every point. His diatribes 
against the religion and theology of Homer and 
Hesiod, who were regarded by the Greeks as the 
founders of their theogony, were perhaps the severest 
blow which paganism suffered before the Christian 
era, and may fairly be considered as preparing and 
paving the way (προοδοποιεῖν) for a higher form of 
religious belief. In the words of Clement of Alexan. ) 
dria, προπαρασκευάζει----ἡ φιλοσοφία, προοδοποιοῦσα 
τὸν εἰς Χριστὸν τελειούμενον". 

These considerations make it clear that the 
genius of Plato is by no means exclusively Greek, 
and that in many points his teaching is directly 
opposed to some of the most cherished beliefs of 
his own age. Even his political sympathies are 

1 Str. 1. 717 D, Migne. 


Appeal to universal asprrations ” 


Panhellenic rather than Athenian, and his philo- 
sophy, though reared on the soil of Attica, appeals, 
as I have already hinted, to certain universal ele- 
ments in human nature, and not to Hellenic human 
nature only. For this reason he is careful to place 
his ideal city under the protection, not of Athena, 
the patron goddess of Athens, or any other divinity 
peculiarly associated with one particular branch of 
the Hellenic race: he commits it to Apollo, the 
god of Delphi, the symbol of Greek unity, aye, and 
something more, the God of the whole human race, 
so far as antiquity recognised such a God of all, the 
commune humant generis oraculum, the ancestral in- 
terpreter, who seated on the holy stone in the centre 
of the earth expounds the Father’s will to all man- 
kind (πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις, Rep. 427c). And what are 
these universal human instincts and aspirations to 
which Platonism makes appeal? It is said that 
when Anaxagoras was asked for what purpose he 
was born, he replied “In order that I may look 
upon the heavens and the sun,” and some of Plato's 
contemporaries were fond of deriving the word 
ἄνθρωπος from ὁ τὰ ἄνω ἀθρῶν, the creature whose 
eyes are directed on the heavenly places, in distinc- 
tion from the lower animals, whose eyes are bent 
downwards on the earth’. In a deeper sense it is 
perhaps true that Nature has implanted in all man- 
kind an unquenchable longing for the things that are 
above: τὰ ἄνω φρονεῖτε, μὴ τὰ ἐπὶ γῆς. So Plato 
at least believes, in common with an innumerable 
1 Cf. Lactantius, Drv. Jnstit. τὶ. c. τ 


— 


8 The Vutality of Platonism 


company of the greatest and noblest in every age, 
and it is to this inborn passion for perfection that he 
appeals—this innate though often unconscious yearn- 
ing after the ideally true and beautiful and good, 
which finds its highest embodiment in lives devoted 
to the service of Knowledge, Art, Humanity, and 
God. The philosophy of Plato furnishes the most 
poetical and perhaps the truest answer to 


“those obstinate questionings 
Of sense and outward things” 


which are the heritage of human nature: it is the 
most inspiring philosophical expression of 


“those first affections, 
Those shadowy recollections, 
Which, be they what they may, 
Are yet the fountain light of all our day, 
Are yet a master light of all our seeing ; 
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make 
Our noisy years seem moments in the being 
Of the eternal Silence: truths that rake, 
To perish never ; 
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour, 
Nor Man nor Boy, 
Nor all that is at enmity with joy, 
Can utterly abolish or destroy!” 


It is because Plato has attempted, and attempted 

‘with more success than others, to satisfy these per- 

manent aspirations of humanity that his philosophy 
still lives, and is likely to live 


“While water flows and tall trees bloom in spring” 
ἔστ᾽ ἂν ὕδωρ τε ῥέῃ καὶ δένδρεα μακρὰ τεθήλῃ. 


Plato's view of Nature 9 


The ancients were in the habit of saying that if 


the Muses spoke in Greek, they must have spoken 


with the tongue of Plato. But it is not only in his ~ 


style and language that Plato is poetical: his philo- 
sophy itself is steeped in poetry, and we shall 
altogether fail to understand his significance in the 
history of human thought unless we realise this in- 


disputable fact. On this account I shall have ~ 


frequent recourse to modern poetry in seeking to 
explain and illustrate the vitality of Platonism, and 
in particular to the poetry of Wordsworth and 
Tennyson, whose writings are often tinged by philo- 
sophic thought. The method which I propose to 
follow is to give an outline of Plato’s teaching, first 
on Nature and secondly on human nature, adding 
parallels and illustrations, chiefly from Tennyson and 
Wordsworth, as opportunity occurs. It is impossible 
within the time at my disposal to touch on all the 
leading doctrines of a writer who ranges with almost 
equal authority over the entire domain of human 
life and thought, but if I succeed in showing you 
that Plato’s philosophy of Nature and especially of 
human nature is not yet dead, my discourse may 
prove at least a finger post to point the way—an 
ἴχνος τῷ ταὐτὸν μετιόντι, Which is Plato’s ideal of 
what a lecture ought to be. 

Perhaps the best way to approach the subject of 
Plato’s conception of Nature will be to start from 
the Zzmaeus. The central idea of that great dia- 
logue is the analogy between the Macrocosm and 
the microcosm, the Universe and man. Let us 


—_ 


io The Vitality of Platonism 


consider the Universe first. The world in which 
we live, says Plato’, is the product of two causes, 
~ Necessity and Perfect Reason) Necessity performs 
the function of the passive or material cause, and is 
in fact nothing but the personification of the original, 
inchoate, indeterminate material substratum, like the 
πρώτη ὕλη of Aristotle. Ideal Reason, in the person 
of the δημιουργός or Creator, plays the part of the 
efficient or creative cause, and evolves order out of 
the chaos of blind necessity, stamping formless 
matter with mathematical forms, ‘which are them- 
selves copies of the Eternal Essences or Ideas, 
moulded from them in a mysterious and wonderful 
way®.” It is thus that the body of the Universe is 
framed. But as in man there is soul as well as 
body, so also in the Universe. The Soul of the 
World is first compounded by God himself out of 
the changeless and the changeful, and then “in the 
midst of the Universe,” as Plato tells us, “he set 
Soul, and drew it through the whole framework, yea 
and wrapped the whole body of the Universe with 
a covering of Soul, and made it a sphere for 
revolving in a circle, one only Universe in lonely 
splendour, but able by reason of its excellence to be 
its Own companion, and needing no other, being 
sufficient to itself for acquaintance and friend. In 
this way he begat that happy God, the Universe*.” 

Now I will ask you to believe that this half- 
poetical, half-religious idea of a World-Soul, which 

1 Tim. 47 © ff. 
* Ibid. 50 Ὁ. > Ibid. 34 8. 


The Soul of the World 11 


according to Plato is as it were the incarnation of the 


Divine Reason, less perfect indeed than God himself 
but still wholly rational and far from anger or desire 
—I will ask you to believe that this World-Soul or 
World-Reason is in reality Plato’s conception of 
Nature. I think a careful study of the Zzmaeus 
will convince you that the identification is sound. 
And if the Soul of the World which God creates in 
the Zzmaeus is in reality Nature, see what follows. 
It follows that Nature, as Dante somewhere says, is 
the child of God, that she is a spiritual and not a 
material creature, good and not evil; for God, ac- 
cording to Plato, is the author only of good, and 
evil cometh not from him. In Plato’s way of 
thinking God and Nature are not two mutually 
opposing forces, but an omnipotent Father and a 
loyal son, working harmoniously together toward 


‘that far-off divine event 
To which the whole Creation moves,” 


when Necessity shall bow the knee, and Good 
prevail. The fact is that it is Plato, and not 
Aristotle, who founded the theological view of the 
Universe, and Aristotle is only Platonising when he 
says that God and Nature do nothing in vain. We 
may add that from another point of view Nature is 
in Plato at once the revelation of God to man and 
God’s vice-gerent, ever indwelling in the world of 
space and time. 

So much at present for Plato’s idea of Nature. 
Other important points will come to light of them- 


ἃ 


i2 The Vitality of Platonism 


selves, when I describe his view of human nature, 
which I now proceed to do. 

Plato was profoundly attracted by Nature, but 
he felt an even deeper interest in man. In this 
respect he is the true successor of his master Socrates. 
The essential nature and history of humanity, with 
all its hopes and enthusiasms, with all its infinite 
possibilities for good and evil, is the dominant theme 
of nearly all his greatest dialogues. It would seem 
that his conception of the Universe itself is in reality 
suggested and conditioned by his view of man. 
The Universe is a “magnus homo,” and has a Soul, 
purer indeed and grander than the soul of man, but 
essentially the same in kind; and just as the truest 
nature of man is to be sought in his soul and not in 
his body, so also, as we have seen, it is the Soul, 
and not the Body of the Universe which constitutes 
the Nature of the Whole. 

What then, according to Plato, is the nature of 
man? (As he appears in this life, man ‘‘is a com- 
pound of the mortal and the immortal, standing 
midway between corruptibility and incorruptibility : 
in the words of Philo, θνητῆς καὶ ἀθανάτου φύσεως 
μεθόριον..." The mortal part is the body, and its 
affections and lusts, which Plato in the 7zmaeus calls 
the “mortal kind of soul” (θνητὸν εἶδος ψυχῆς): the 
immortal part is Reason, the eye of soul, the lamp 
of human life, the representative of God in man, 
the candle of the Lord. The mythical creation 
of the rational part of our souls by God is thus 


+ De Mund. Opif. 46. See Adam, Republic of Plato, 588 z. 


Plato's view of man 13 


described by Plato. After the Creator had com- 
pounded the Universal Soul ‘again into the same 
cup, in which he blended and mingled the Soul of 
the Universe, he poured that which was left of the 
former elements, mingling them in somewhat the 
same way, yet no longer so pure as before, but one 
or two degrees less pure’.” In other words the 
rational or immortal part of soul, for it is that alone 
which comes immediately from God himself, is made 
of the same elements as the Soul of the Universe. 
Now we have already seen that Plato thinks of the 
World-Soul as Nature, and I would have you ob- 
serve what follows as to the relationship existing 
between Nature and man. Every vestige of hos- 
tility and antagonism disappears; and Nature, 
instead of being “red in tooth and claw with ravine,” 
is man’s elder brother co-operating with him and the 
universal Father in one great Trinity of beneficence 
and love against the stubborn and malignant forces 
of Necessity and Chaos, It has been said that it is 
a good thing to have a devil in the world, so long 
as you keep your foot on his neck. War is the 
never-ending lot of πηδη---πόλεμος πάντων πατήρ--- 
and in the struggle against evil we have the gods 
for our allies. The general conception of a natural 
affinity or kinship between God and man, and man 
and Nature was not invented by Plato. It was a 
familiar Greek idea that men are but “mortal gods,” 
and gods “immortal men’,” and Pindar was only 

1 Tim. 41 D. 

* These words are put into Heraclitus’ mouth by Lucian, V7z. 
Auct. 14. 


14 The Vitality of Platonism 


expressing a common belief when he sang “one is 
the race of men and gods: and from one mother we 
both inherit the breath of life.” There is also 
reason to believe that the same inspiring conception 
had already even before the time of Plato assumed 
a deeper and more religious significance in Orphic 
and Pythagorean teaching. The unity between 
man and nature, again, was an underlying hypothesis 
of Greek life; and the life in harmony with Nature, 
that is, with the Nature of the Whole, is an ideal 
which expresses much of the best Greek thought 
even before the days of Stoicism. But Plato is the 
first of the Greeks to make the kinship of the divine 
and human natures the basis of a philosophy of man, 
and he expounds the doctrine with more emphasis 
than any pre-Christian thinkers except the Stoics, 
and with a far greater wealth of philosophic meaning 
than any other writer in any age. 

At this stage 1 will invite you to pause for a 
moment and consider the affinity between this view 
of Nature and that with which we meet in the 
poems of Wordsworth. The subject of Words- 
worth’s Platonism has already been briefly touched 
upon by the author of /ohn Inglesant, in a paper 
read to the Wordsworth society in 1881: and I 
observe that a critic in the Zzmes of to-day (March 
20, 1903) pronounces Wordsworth “the profoundest, 
the most daring Platonist in English literature.” Mr 
Shorthouse lays stress upon a remarkable passage 
from the Axcurszon and finds in it ‘the key not 


1 Nem. 6. 1. 


Plato and Wordsworth 15 


only to Wordsworth’s Platonism, but to that peculiar 
conception of his that an entrance into the world of 
abstract thought may be won by the help of material 


19) 


objects.” The lines of Wordsworth are :— 


“While yet a child and long before his time 
Had he perceived the presence and the power 
Of greatness: and deep feelings had impressed 
Great objects on his mind, with portraiture 
And colour so distinct, that on his mind 
They lay like substances, and almost seem’d 
To haunt the bodily sense®.” 


“The presence and the power of greatness,’ ” 
says Shorthouse—‘“ this is that ‘principle of excel- 
lence’ in which Plato believed.” The poet seems - 
to affirm that by the help of the vast objects of 
nature, perceived in silence and in solitude, we are 
enabled to understand and to conceive the great 
realities of abstract thought, and to 


“breathe in worlds 
To which the Heaven of Heavens is but a veil.” 


These remarks are suggestive and true; but in 
what I have to say of Wordsworth’s Platonism I 
will pursue a somewhat different, and for some of 
you perhaps an easier line of thought, confining 
myself to Wordsworth’s view of Nature and her 
relation to man. It seems to me that the philo- - 
sophical idea which underlies nearly all the finest 
poetry of Wordsworth is no other than that which 
we have already found in Plato, although the 
English poet develops it in a somewhat different 


ae ag * Book 1. 


16 The Vitality of Platonism 


way from the Greek philosopher. To Wordsworth 
as to Plato, Nature is a Soul or Spirit, and divine: 


“Ὁ Soul of Nature! that by laws divine 
Sustained and governed, still dost overflow 
With an impassioned life?!” 


And just as in Plato Nature imitates God, and 
is created by Perfect Wisdom, so in Wordsworth 


Nature is 
“a Power 
That is the visible quality and shape 
And image of Right Reason: that matures 
Her processes by stedfast laws; gives birth 
To no impatient or fallacious hopes, 
No vain conceits: provokes to no quick turns 
Of self-appiauding intellect; but trains 
To meekness, and exalts by humble faith*.” 


In more than one passage Wordsworth appears 
to conceive of Nature as an indwelling soul, like 
Plato’s Soul of the Universe: 


“To every form of Being is assigned 


An active Principle: 
it subsists 

In all things, in all natures; in the stars 
Of azure heaven, the unenduring clouds, 

In flower and tree, in every pebbly stone 
That paves the brooks, the stationary rocks, 
The moving waters, and the invisible air. 


Spirit that knows no insulated spot, 
No chasm, no solitude; from link to link 
It circulates, the Soul of all the Worlds*.” 


1 Prelude, Book ΧΙ. ® Jbid. Book xu. 
* Excursion, Book 1x. ad init. 


Plato and Wordsworth 17 


It is in this spirit that Wordsworth finds the true 
and essential unity of Nature, 


“Even as one essence of pervading light 
Shines in the brightest of ten thousand stars 
And the mute moon that feeds the lonely lamp 
Couched in the dewy grass’.” 


With this may be compared the passage from: 
the Lzxes composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey 
beginning 

“T have felt 
A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
Of elevated thoughts*.” 


And it is the same idea to which the poet gives 
magnificent expression in his description of the 
scenery of Switzerland :— 


“The immeasurable height 
Of woods decaying, never to be decayed, 
The stationary blasts of waterfalls, 
And in the narrow rent at every turn 
Winds thwarting winds, bewildered and forlorn, 
The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky, 
The rocks that muttered close upon our ears, 
Black drizzling crags that spake by the wayside 
As if a voice were in them, the sick sight 
And giddy prospect of the raving streams, 
The unfettered clouds and region of the Heavens, 
Tumult and peace, the darkness and the light— 
Were all the workings of one mind, the features 
Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree; 
Characters of the great Apocalypse, 
The types and symbols of Eternity, 
Of first, and last, and midst, and without end*.” 


' Prelude, Book xiv. 
> Quoted infra, The Divine Origin of the Soul, p. 48. 
5 Prelude, Book VI. 

A. E. 2 


18 The Vitality of Platonism 


And in her relations with man, how kind, and 
beneficent is Nature! What lessons of moderation 
and calm she teaches us! What strength and con- 
solation we derive from communion with the “ kin- 
dred spectacles and sounds” of nature, “the noise of 
wood and water,” the starry heavens, the sea, the 
“everlasting hills”! Of these and similar ideas the 
poetry of Wordsworth is full, and quotations would 
be superfluous. I will only add that Wordsworth, 
like Plato, is never forgetful of man when he writes 
of Nature. As Shorthouse says, if ‘‘ Nature elevates 
man,” “man consecrates Nature”—‘‘man and Nature 
act and re-act’.’ And thus it is that no one who is 
not a friend of man can hope to understand the voice 
of Nature. 

“But this we from the mountains learn 
And this the valleys show, 
That never will they deign to hold 
Communion where the heart is cold 
To human weal and woe?.” 
It is 
“‘the still sad music of humanity” 


that Nature sings, 


“Not harsh nor grating, though of ample power 
To chasten and subdue’®.” 


These quotations, which might be greatly 
multiplied, may seem perhaps to show you that 
there is a strong vein of Platonism in Wordsworth. 


 p. 6 of paper quoted above. 
* Lines composed at Cora Linn. 
* Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey. 


Celestzal origin of man 19 


Mr Shorthouse is unwilling to assert that Words- 
worth “consciously Platonized; on the contrary, it 
is not likely that he ever read the Dialogues.” | 
do not feel sure of this, but all that I wish at present 
to maintain is that Wordsworth’s interpretation of 
Nature has its philosophical basis whether con- 
sciously or unconsciously in Platonism. Let us now 
return to Plato himself. 

The famous words in which Plato proclaims that 
man is “8 celestial and not a terrestrial plant*”— 
οὐράνιον φυτόν, οὐκ eyyevov—suM up a whole school 
of theological and religious thought. You remember 
the passage in which St Paul addresses the Stoic 
and Epicurean philosophers on the Areopagus at 
Athens: ‘‘God hath made of one blood all nations 
of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and 
hath determined the times before appointed, and the 
bounds of their habitation: that they should seek 
the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find 
him, though he be not far from any one of us: for 
in him we live, and move, and have our being: as 
certain also of your own poets have said, For we 
are also his offspring "---τοῦ yap καὶ γένος ἐσμέν (Acts 
xvii. 26-28). These sentences are full of Stoic moral 
and religious teaching, and the sentiment with which 
they conclude, though it may have been derived by 
Paul from the Phaenomena of Aratus, who uses the 
same quotation in the second century before Christ 
—or possibly from Aristobulus of Alexandria—this 
profound conviction of the universal brotherhood of 


1 Tim. go A. 


20 The Vitality of Platonesm 


men and their relationship to God the Father reaches 
back through the hymn of Cleanthes the Stoic to the 
great Platonic doctrine which I have named. It is 
the same belief in the celestial origin of man that 
inspires the teaching of some of the early fathers 
of the Church, such as Justin Martyr, Clement of 
Alexandria, and Origen, nor has it lost its power to 
move the minds and sway the hearts of men to-day. 
Perhaps it is not too much to say that the ἐκ σοῦ 
yap γένος ἐσμέν of Cleanthes is the highest expres- 
sion of the religious sentiment in the whole range 
of Greek literature and not unworthy to rank with 
the Christian equivalent: “Our Father which art in 
Heaven.” In the presence of this spiritual affinity 
the distinction between Pagan and Christian seems 
to fade away, and we have a momentary vision of 
an ideal faith, a παράδειγμα ἐν οὐρανῷ, whereof all 
earthly religions are but shadows pointing to the 
perfect day. 

Plato's position on this subject is that he believes 
it to be just the presence of this divine element 
in man which renders his nature most distinctively 
and most specifically human. The ‘colour and 
likeness of true manhood,” says Plato in the Re- 
public’, is its likeness to the God-head : dvdpeixehov 
is nothing but θεοείκελον. Man is most manlike 
when he most resembles God, and (as Tennyson 
says) ‘then most godlike being most a man.” The 
lower appetites which clog and thwart the soul are 
no part of man at all: they are of the earth, earthy, 


* See Adam, notes on δ. 501 B, 589 D. SOT ἂν 


Essential divinity of man 21 


whereas man is a child of Heaven. It is the higher - 
which is the 4wman nature, and according to this 
higher nature man must be defined and placed. The 
noble lines of George Herbert, which I have else- 
where quoted to illustrate this subject, express the 
teaching of Plato better than anything that I can say, 
and may at the same time serve to show you that 
whether Platonism is a dead philosophy or not, it 
may sometimes be a living faith. 


“To this life things of sense 
Make their pretence: 
In th’ other Angels have a right by birth: 
Man tries them both alone, 
And makes them one 
With th’ one hand touching heav’n, with th other earth, 
In soul he mounts and flies, 
In flesh he dies, 
He wears a stuffe whose thread is coarse and round, 
But trimm’d with curious lace; 
And should take place 
After the trimming, not the stuffe and ground’.” 


Of this doctrine of the essential divinity of man 
I have said in another place that ‘‘the sure and , 
abiding conviction of the presence of a divine ele- 
ment within us, rendering our nature essentially and 
truly human, makes itself felt in nearly all the 
dialogues of Plato. It is the ultimate source of all 
his idealism, religious and metaphysical, no less than 
moral and political, and may well be considered the 
most precious and enduring inheritance which he 
has bequeathed to posterity*.” To me this doctrine 


1 Man’s Medley. ® Note cn ep. 501 B. 


22 The Vitality of Platonism 


appears to be more fundamental than anything else 
in Plato, except perhaps the theory of Ideas, with 
which it stands in close relationship; and it is 
assuredly the most living, aye and life-giving of all 
Platonic doctrines. Let us endeavour for a moment 
to understand how it is connected with other parts 
of Plato’s teaching—such as his theory of knowledge, 
the pre- -existence and immortality of the soul, and 
the aim and scope of education. 

“The only true objects of knowledge, according 
to Plato, are the transcendent, self-existing Ideas, 
which are poetically described in the myth of the 
Phaedrus. These Ideas, which are themselves the 
only true realities, on the model of which the 
visible Universe and all its parts are fashioned, 
depend in turn upon the one supreme or sovereign 
Idea, that is the Good, so that the whole Universe 
of thought and things is, if we may adopt a phrase 
of Aristotle, attached το---ἀνήρτηται ék—the Idea of 
Good or God. Or to change the figure, we may say 
that the totality of existences is one long altar-stair, 
ascending step by step from the lowest to the highest, 

“Through the mighty commonwealth of things, 

Up from the creeping plant to sovereign man},” 
and higher still through all the infinite gradations 
of the spiritual world, whose lamp or sun is God 
himself. Both conceptions are Platonic, and both 
are also Tennysonian : 

“For so the whole round earth is every way 


Bound by gold chains about the feet of God*.” 
1 Wordsworth, £xcursion, Book tv. ® Morte d@’ Arthur. 


Human soul akin to the Ideas 23 


And again : 
“the great world’s altar-stairs 
That slope through darkness up to God’.” 


To these transcendent Ideas, and especially to the 
Idea of Good, the human soul, in virtue of its 
inherent divinity, is akin, and by reason of its kin- 
ship with the ideally true and beautiful, it is able to 
apprehend perfection. 

As the Cambridge Platonists in the seventeenth 
century loved to say, Man’s Reason is the candle of 
the Lord, lighted by God himself, to guide the soul 
on high. In the words of Nathanael Culverwel, 
perhaps the most truly eloquent of that illustrious 
band of writers and thinkers: ‘‘ The Candle of the 
Lord it came from him, and ’twould faine return to 
him,...the face of the soul naturally looks up to God, 
coelumgue tuert gussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere 
vultus, tis as true of the soul as of the body. All 
light loves to dwell at home with the Father of 
Lights. Heaven ‘tis Patria luminum, God has 
there fixt a tabernacle for the Sun, for ’tis good to 
be there, ’tis a condescension in a Sunne-beam that 
twill stoop as low as earth, and that ’twill guild this 
inferiour part of the world; ’tis the humility of light 
that ‘twill incarnate and incorporate it self unto 
sublunary bodies; yet even there ‘tis not forgetful 
of its noble birth and original, but ’twill still look 
upwards to the Father of Lights*.” 


* In Memoriam, 55. 
7 A discourse of the Light of Nature, 1st Ed., p. 199. 


, 
ων 


24 The Vutalty of Platonism 


It is in this way that the doctrine of the divinity 
of the human soul is connected with the Platonic 
theory of knowledge. How is it related to the 
teaching of Plato on pre-existence and immortality ? 
Throughout the whole of Greek literature, from 
Homer downwards, immortality is universally held 
to be an attribute of that which is divine, and it is 
a wide-spread principle of Greek philosophy that. 
the ἄφθαρτον is also é&yévyrov—the immortal is also 
the uncreated. Each of these principles is fully 
accepted by Plato, and although in the 7zmaeus he 
speaks of the creation of the human soul by God, 
that is in all probability only an allegorical way of 
saying that the soul of man is an efflux or fragment 
—dréomacpa, as the Stoics said—of the divine Soul. 
It certainly does not imply that Soul as such had a 
beginning in time. In this way the divinity of Soul 
implies at once its pre-existence and its immortality. 
To tell the story of the Soul as Plato tells it, 
mingling poetic fancy with moral and religious 
truth, and “o’erlaying all with the Muses’ charm” 
—musaeo contingens cuncta lepore—would require 
the genius of another Plato. Each particular soul 
“hasan endless history behind it, and an 1 infinite 


—— a 


prospect before. Incarnation is only an episode 
eee 25 OM), 


SSS 


| in_a_life that stretches through both eternities, a_ 


eg -..-τὸ.--- 


halting-place, or shall 1 we say a quiet haven } ? Nay 


rather a troubled and storm-tossed sea, a prison- 
house in which the soul is chained till Death, the 


great deliverer, sets her free, a tomb in which soul 
lies dead, until death’s resurrection morn shall bid 


Pre-existence and tmmortality 25 


the shadows flee away. We are again reminded of 
St Paul: “O wretched man that I am, who shall 
deliver me from this body of death ?” (Rom. vii. 24). 
“For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being 
burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but 
clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up 
of life” (2 Cor. v. 4). Or in the words of St Peter, 
both of whose epistles furnish many analogies to the 
doctrine of Plato, θανατωθεὶς μὲν σαρκί, ζωοποιηθεὶς 
δὲ πνεύματι--τῃε death of the body makes the spirit 
alive. Before the round of incarnation began, says 
Plato in the Zzmaeus', God ‘‘set each soul as it were 
in a chariot and showed her the nature of the whole,” 
in harmony with which it is her duty to live; and 
in the interval between each successive incarnation, 
the soul that has strenuously followed truth and 
righteousness on earth, renews her faded fires and 
plumes her wings afresh by gazing on the perfect 
forms of Beauty and Truth in the realms of the 
Ideas. And when she returns to earth again, if she 
have drunk not too deeply of that ‘daughter of 
Lethe,” that awaits “the slipping through from state 
to state” it may often happen that a stray sunbeam 
from the heavenly kingdom enters the window of 
the prison-house and reminds her of the “imperial 
palace whence she came,” making her to rejoice 
and sing like ‘“‘Memnon smitten with the morning 
sun.” This is the Platonic form of that doctrine ~ 
of Reminiscence or Recollection with which we so 


1 ALE, 42 B. 


26 The Vitality of Platonism 


often meet in English poetry. It is this which 
inspires the lines of Tennyson :— 


“Moreover, something is or seems, 
That touches me with mystic gleams, 
Like glimpses of forgotten dreams— 


Of something felt, like something here ; 
Of something done, I know not where; 
Such as no language may declare’.” 


The same thought is expressed by Boethius? 


‘Who for a good he knows not sighs? 
Who can an unknown end pursue? 
How find? How e’en when haply found 
Hail that strange form he never knew? 
Or ts it that man’s inmost soul 
Once knew each part and knew the whole? 


“Now, though by fleshly vapours dimmed, 
Not all forgot her visions past ; 
For while the several parts are lost, 
To the one whole she cleaveth fast ; 
Whence he who yearns the truth to find 
Is neither sound of sight nor blind. 


“For neither does he know in full, 
Nor is he reft of knowledge quite, 
But, holding still to what is left, 
He gropes in the uncertain light, 
And by the past that still survives 
To win back all he bravely strives.” 


And it is essentially the same idea which was in the 
~mind of Wordsworth when he wrote the Ode on the 
L[ntimations of Immortality. 


1 The Two Voices. 
* Consolation of Philosophy, v. 3, tr. James. 


Doctrine of Reminiscence 27 


“Hence in a season of calm weather 
Though inland far we be 
Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea 
Which brought us hither, 
Can in a moment travel thither, 
And see the Children sport upon the shore, 
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.” 


In the prefatory note with which he introduces 
this poem, Wordsworth is careful to indicate that he 
is not committed to the doctrine of the pre-existence 
of the soul: he merely regards the notion “as 
having sufficient foundation in humanity ” to justify 
him in using it for poetical purposes. The doctrine 
almost disappears from Greek philosophy, properly 
so-called, between the time of Plato and the Neopla- 
tonists ; but its influence is traceable in the apocryphal 
literature of the Old Testament, and especially in 
the book of the Wisdom of Solomon. ‘I was a 
child of goodly parts,” says the author of that work, 
“ and received a good soul; or rather, being good, I 
came into a body undefiled ”—dyafds dv ἦλθον εἰς 
σῶμα ἀμίαντον. It has not been accepted by the 
Christian Church, and now survives in Western 
literature chiefly as a poetic fancy. In the East, 
on the other hand, it is still what it was to Plato 
and to Origen, and in later times to Henry Moore 
—an integral and essential part of the belief in the 
eternity of Soul. The other half of Plato’s doctrine 
has fared better; but there is πὸ philosophical 
system at the present day which can be compared 


1 Vill. 20. 


28 The Vitality of Platonism 


with Platonism in the extent to which it is moulded 
and inspired by the ever-present consciousness of 
immortality. 

It remains for us to see in what way Plato's 
doctrine of the divinity of the human soul affects 
his conception of the scope and method of education. 
In our essential nature, the soul is divine ; but when 
incarnate in a mortal body, she is clogged and en- 
cumbered by the evils inseparable from her tenement 
of flesh. In these circumstances, what is the duty 
of the teacher? Is it, as some of Plato’s contem- 
poraries held—nor is the opinion even now extinct 
—is it to endeavour “to put sight as it were into 
blind eyes”—in other words to fill the soul with 
moribund facts and dogma, imperfectly understood, 
or rather, as Plato would say, not understood at all ? 
Against this view of education Plato urges unrelent- 
ing warfare, for it is the entire and absolute negation 
of his whole theory and practice. According to him 
Reason, which is the eye of the soul, present in 
many men and women, is never blind; although its 
gaze is only too often directed on the false and 
fleeting, the hollow and impure. The ‘‘leaden 
weights ” of tradition, prejudice, passion and desire, 
drag the soul’s eye downwards to that which is of 
the earth earthy. / Who then, according to Plato, is 
the true and heaven-born teacher? He is one who 
makes it his aim, not to multiply, but to remove 
those leaden weights, that the soul may thus obey 
her native impulse and soar upwards. Or to change 
the figure, and avail myself of what I have ventured 


Transformation of the soul by education 29 


to write elsewhere, “Michael Angelo used to say | 


that every block of marble contained a statue, and 
that the sculptor brings it to light by cutting away 
the encumbrances by which the ‘human face divine’ 
is concealed. In like manner, according to Plato, it 
is the business of the teacher to prune the soul of 
his pupil of those unnatural excrescences and incrus- 
tations which hide its true nature, until the human 
sou divine stands out in all its pristine grace and 
purity’.” Or yet again, the teacher is a kind of 
revolutionist, seeking to turn round the soul of his 
pupil from darkness into light. In this process of 
revolution or circumversion—zepiaywy7 is the Greek 
word—the moral as well as the intellectual part of 
our nature shares. Plato is most careful to point 
this out?, and he would have refused to admit that 
it is possible for the intellect to be transformed 
without a corresponding transformation of the moral 
nature. But the transformation is effected, according 
to Plato, through the Reason, which is the element 
of God within us, rather than through the will, and 
it is the development of the reason and the reasoning 
faculties which his curriculum of studies in the 
Republic is primarily intended to produce. 

What is that curriculum? Theory of Number, 
Plane Geometry, Stereometry, Astronomy, Har- 
monics and Dialectic. We need not suppose that 
Plato was irrevocably committed to these particular 
studies: he did what every great educational reformer 
must always do, adopted the leading scientific studies 

* Note on Rep. 518 c. > Lbid. 


ὃ 


30 The Vitality of Platonism 


of his day, and infused new life and meaning into 
them. But I feel sure that Plato would never have 
surrendered the one great principle that the avenue 
to the knowledge of the Ideas leads through Mathe- 
matics to Dialectic: for inasmuch as Nature is 
constructed by God according to mathematical laws 
—Oeds ἀεὶ yeoperpei—he who would apprehend the 
truths of Nature must travel through Mathematics 
to his goal’. I have elsewhere drawn attention to an 
interesting and, as 1 think, important fact in con- 
nexion with the influence of Plato’s curriculum on the 
course of medieval academic study. You are aware 
that the curriculum of our Universities used to con- 
sist of a guadrivium and a trivium, the guadrivium 
being Arithmetic, Geometry, Music and Astronomy. 
These four studies you will observe correspond to 
Plato’s five preliminary studies, Theory of Number, 
Plane Geometry, Stereometry, Astronomy and 
Harmonics: for Stereometry, as conceived by Plato, 
is only a branch of Geometry. Now the Platonic 
Academy had a continuous history till Justinian 
closed the philosophic schools, and we can hardly 
be wrong in supposing that the adoption of these 
studies into the medieval curriculum was due 
directly or indirectly to the value attached to them 
by the Platonic school. But there is a still more 
striking link cementing our Universities with the 
Academy of Plato and even with the fourth century 
p.c. In the medieval Universities those who were 


1 See Adam, Religious Teachers of Greece, p. 419 f.; Republic 
of Plato, vol. 11., p. 168. 


Educational curriculum 31 


duly qualified in the guadrivium and trivium received 
the title of bachelors or masters of Arts, because 
Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy and Music, to- 
gether with the studies of the ¢vzvzum, were techni- 
cally called Avts. Now the interesting point to 
notice is that this use of the word Arts in what I 
may call the academic sense, actually occurs in Plato, 
who speaks of Number or Arithmetic, Geometry, 
Astronomy and Music as the so-called Arts. When 
the mystic cap is placed upon your heads, making 
you magtstros or magistras arttum as the case may 
be, I ask you to remember that you are indebted 
to Plato, or the age in which he lived, for part at 
least of this high sounding and doubtless well- 
deserved title. 

So far, I have spoken of Plato’s educational 
theory as if it affected our present life on earth and 
nothing more. But inasmuch as the faculty of 
reason, which the teacher tries to cherish and foster, 
is immortal and divine, the horizon of the teacher is 
not limited by this transitory life. The soul, says — 
Plato, takes nothing with it into the unseen world 
except its education’. Plato therefore “believes 
that the teacher can influence the pupil for hereafter 
as well as for life here, and that the soul which is 
once smitten with the love of truth may still advance 
from knowledge to more knowledge throughout un- 
numbered lives and phases of existence” still to 
come’. If the seed appears for the moment to fall 


' Phaed. 107 D. 
* Adam, Rep. of Plato, vol. ii., p. 168. 


ὩΣ. The Vitality of Platonism 


on barren soil, the teacher may still be comforted : 
perchance it may yet “bloom to profit, otherwhere.” 
“We will not,” says the Platonic Socrates, “relinquish 
our endeavour, until we either persuade Thrasy- 
machus and the others, or make some progress in 
view of the life which is to come, when in another 
existence we may chance on topics such as these.” 
Καλὸν τὸ ἦθλον Kat ἡ ἐλπὶς μεγάλη----Ἰ think you will 
agree with me that such a theory of education upholds 
to usa larger prospect than the usual application of the 
term either in ancient or in moderntimes. According 
to the familiar saying, some of us are born Platonists, 
and the rest Aristotelians; and the Aristotelian will 
probably think that here, as elsewhere, Plato soars 
too high. In reply to this objection, Plato would 
probably say, and say with truth, that even if the 
soal appears to some impossible to reach, the 
stimulus of a great though unattainable ideal may 
enable them to reach the limits of that to which they 
can attain. Think of the heavenly pastures through 
which the soul is led in looking for that untravelled 
land. And even if we refuse to follow Plato into 
these loftier regions of thought and speculation, his 
remarks on educational theory and method furnish 
many lessons for the guidance of teacher and pupil 
even within a narrower sphere. Among these | 
will only mention two or three: How does Plato 
conceive of the relationship between the teacher and 
the taught? They are intellectual partners or 
comrades in the search for knowledge. The teacher 


' Rep. 498 D. 


The goal and means of education ΕἾ 


is himself a learner, and the pupil a teacher; for it is 


from the contact of the two minds that truth or - 


knowledge springs to light. Another lesson is that 
education is at once an intellectual and a moral 
revelation, the περιαγωγή of the whole nature of 
the pupil ἐκ σκότους eis das—out of darkness into 
light. The ultimate goal of intellectual education, 
according to Plato, is the knowledge of God, and 
moral training culminates in assimilation to His 
glorious image—dpotwo.s θεῷ κατὰ τὸ δυνατὸν 
ἀνθρώπῳ᾽. This is Plato’s version of man’s chief 
end. Hardly less valuable and significant is Plato’s 
view of education as the free and unconstrained 
development of the individual soul, and his concep- 
tion of the means whereby this end can be attained 
—stimulus, the shock of surprise and contradiction, 
the pleasure of discovery, generalisations prematurely 
formed and gladly discarded in favour of new and 
later generalisations, destined themselves to suffer 
the same fate as the intellectual horizon widens and 
expands. These and many other kindred principles 
of educational theory are frequently heralded as new 
discoveries of the present day, as for example by 
Professor Armstrong, who is never weary of extol- 
ling what he calls the ‘‘heuristic” method. In point 
of fact, they are all of them found in Plato, and their 
employment in the art and practice of education ts 
abundantly illustrated throughout his dialogues. 
But we shall miss the most distinctive and essential 
element in Plato’s theory of education if we seek to 


 Theaet. 176 8. 


34 The Vitality of Platonism 


narrow its range or isolate it from the rest of his 
philosophy. Plato never loses sight of the whole 
when treating of the part, and education in his view 
is but a part of life; as life itself is of eternity. The 
genius of Plato is always reaching forth after τοῦ 
ὅλου καὶ παντὸς θείου τε καὶ avOpwrivov’—his gaze is 
fixed upon “all time and all existence "---παντὸς 
μὲν χρόνον, πάσης δὲ οὐσίας. In the words of 
Goethe, “every utterance of Plato points to the 
eternal—to an eternal Unity or Whole ”’—ein ewig 
Ganzes—“an eternal principle of Goodness, Truth 
and Beauty which he strives to quicken and promote 
in every bosom’*.” 

In Plato’s description of that momentous scene in 
the prison-house of Athens—a scene to which there 
is no parallel, save only one, in human_history— 
occur the touching and memorable words: ἀλλ᾽ οἶμαι 
ἔγωγε, ὦ Σώκρατες, ἔτι ἥλιον εἶναι ἐπὶ τοῖς ὄρεσι Kal 
οὔπω δεδυκέναι. “ Nay, Socrates, I think the sun is 
still upon the mountains, and has not yet set,” In 
the considerations which I have put before you, I 
have hardly touched the fringe of a great and noble 
subject, but I hope that some of you may have at 
least begun to realise that Plato’s sun still shines 
upon the everlasting hills. 


1 Rep. 486 A. 
* Farbenlehre, 111. p. 141, Weimar, 1893. 
® Phaed. 116. 


oo. Fite DOU ΝΕ, OF ΤΕ 
SLES TIAL: ORIGEN., OF, THE: SOUL 
PROM. PINDAR TO PLATO 


Kal σῶμα μὲν πάντων ἕπεται θανάτῳ περισθενεῖ, 

‘\ ΒΗ Τὰν , 7° + Ἀ 4, > / 
ζωὸν ὃ ετι λείπεται αιωνος εἴδωλον" TO γὰρ εστι μόνον 
5 el ῳ Ν ΄ = eli εν 
ἐκ θεῶν: εὕδει δὲ πρασσόντων μελέων, ἀτὰρ εὐδόντεσσιν 

ἐν πολλοῖς ὀνείροις 
δείκνυσι τερπνῶν ἐφέρποισαν χαλεπῶν τε κρίσιν. 
PinDAR, fragment 131 Bergk. 
The body of all men ts subject to all-powerful death, 
but alive there yet remains an image of the living 
man; for that alone zs 
Jrom the gods. It sleeps when the limbs are active, 
but to them that sleep tn many a dream 
it vevealeth an award of joy or sorrow drawing near. 


I propose in the present lecture to invite your 
attention to part of a remarkable fragment of 
Pindar’s dirges, preserved by Plutarch in his Conx- 
solatio ad Apollonium’. It has long been recognised 
that the Pindaric dirges introduce us to a circle of 
ideas to which Greek poetry is hitherto a stranger, 
although parallels are to be found in Orphic eschato- 
logy and to a certain extent also in the fragments 


ἫΝ 40, 
3—2 


36 The Divine Origin of the Soul 


of Heraclitus. From whatever source Pindar may 
have derived his conception of the future world, and 
he certainly did not evolve it out of his inner 
consciousness and nothing else, the power of poetry 
to refine and purify religious sentiment has never 
been better illustrated than by the poet who 
throughout his whole career believed himself the 
chosen servant of Apollo, the god of religious and 
prophetical as well as of poetical inspiration. My 
object, however, is not to discuss the origin of these 
beliefs : it is rather to trace from Pindar to Plato the 
gradual development and progressive intellectualisa- 
tion of one of the beliefs contained in the particular 
fragment which 1 have put into your hands, and 
incidentally, perhaps, to remark upon its significance 
in connexion with later developments in Poetry, 
Philosophy, and Religion. 

A word or two is necessary with reference to 
the translation. αἰών, which 1 have taken as “the 
living man,” means simply “life.” Pindar is using the 
abstract for the concrete. In my opinion W. Christ 
is grievously wrong when he explains the word by 
aevi sempiternz, “eternity”: αἰών is never so used 
by Pindar. In the last line κρίσιν means “ adjudica- 
tion,” 85 κρίνω in a passage of the Pythzans means 
“adjudge’”’: 

τοῖς οὔτε νόστος ὁμῶς 
ἔπαλπνος ἐν Πυθιάδι κρίθη: 

“To them, at the Pythian festival, no such glad return 

to home was adjudged”: 


1 18.855. 


Homeric notion of soul 37 


but the specific reference in our fragment, as Boeckh 
and other editors have pointed out, is doubtless to 
the adjudication of joy and sorrow at the judgment 
of the dead. Pindar recognises such a judgment in 
the second Olympian’, and implicitly also in other 
fragments of his θρῆνοι" describing the bliss that 
awaits the pious, and the torments in store for the 
wicked. Anyone who reads the fragments of the 
θρῆνοι side by side will agree, I think, that κρίσιν is 
to be understood in this way. 

Let us now turn our attention to the ideas which 
Pindar’s words embody. We note to begin with 
the survival of the old Homeric notion of the soul 
as the shadow of the living self. The soul of 
Patroclus, you remember, appeared to Achilles in a 
vision of the night, ‘“‘in all things like to the man 
himself, in stature and fair eyes and voice, and the 
raiment on his body was the same®*.” So far, there- 
fore, we are entirely on Homeric ground. But the 
rest of the passage belongs to a stratum of ideas 
which is unlike anything to be found in the //zad or 
Odyssey. In the first place, the soul is said to be of 
divine descent ; secondly, this kinship with the gods 
is cited as a ground for believing in immortality— 
τὸ γάρ ἐστι μόνον ἐκ θεῶν, the first indication, | 
believe, in Greek literature of a definite argument 
for this belief, such as Plato afterwards developed 
in the Phaedo ; and thirdly, the fundamental idea in 
the last two lines, the idea of which the premonitory 
vision of the day of judgment is one particular 


1 


2, 59. 2 130, 132, 133 Bergk. A oe Oe 


38 The Divine Origin of the Soul 


application, is that during life, so long as we are 
awake and conscious, the soul is asleep, but when 
the body is laid to rest, the soul awakes and reveals 
to us in visions of the night that which in our 
waking moments we cannot see. It is the first of 
these conceptions, that of the celestial origin of the 
soul, with whose development in Greek literature 
down to Plato I wish at present to deal; but we 
shall find that the other two ideas are closely bound 
up with it, and sometimes make their appearance in 
writers by whom the soul’s divinity is affirmed. 

In Pindar, as in Heraclitus, a thinker with 
whom the poet has other points in common besides 
obscurity, the celestial origin of the soul is still, 
what it primarily was, a predominantly religious 
belief; but the germs of a philosophical inter- 
pretation are already discernible when the poet 
deliberately founds his faith in immortality upon this 
doctrine, and also when by means of it he explains 
the possibility of divination during sleep. The 
particular idea involved in the latter part of the 
passage before us, reappears not only in the Republic 
of Plato’ but also in an Aristotelian fragment, where 
we are told that ‘‘ whenever the soul is alone and by 
itself in sleep, it recovers its proper nature,” that is, 
of course, its celestial nature, ‘‘and divines and 
prophesies the future*”; and the same idea lies at 
the root of the Stoic philosophy of divination. Nor 
is it, indeed, unknown in modern psychological 
thought. Pindar’s description of the soul in this 


᾿ Ix 572% P:R. 


Pindar and modern psychology 39 


passage bears an obvious and striking resemblance . 
to Mr Myers’ theory of the subconscious or sub- 
liminal self, which, according to the hypothesis of 
Professor James, is the medium of communication 
between the soul and that higher or transcendental 
region which he calls God: nor did the analogy 
escape Mr Myers, for he chooses the Pindaric 
fragment as the heading of his chapter on Sleep’. 
In his Ingersoll lecture, again, Professor James 
makes the existence of this subliminal self the basis 
of an argument for immortality, precisely as Pindar 
says: ‘for this alone is from the gods.” The 
possibility of a philosophical development of the 
Pindaric notion is also, I think, involved in another 
passage of Pindar. You will observe that here it is 
simply wvy7—soul in the old Homeric sense, or not 
much more—that comes from the gods. In the 
sixth Nemean, however, after emphatically pro- 
claiming the original unity of men and gods— 
ἕν ἀνδρῶν, ἕν θεῶν yévos’—Pindar suggests that 
perhaps the point in which we resemble the im- 
mortals is in zd or reason (μέγαν νόον). And it 
is on the divinity of νοῦς, rather than of ψυχή, that 
Greek philosophy, as we shall presently see, chiefly 
insists. This, and not simply the soul or ψυχή, is 
the philosophical version of that διόσδοτος ἀρχά, 
that god-given seed or germ of life which Pindar 


' Human Personality, vol. 1. p. 121. | 

* 6. 1. I agree with Professor Bury in his explanation of 
these words. 

ἢ 7614. 5. 


40 The Divine Origin of the Soul 


mentions in yet another fragment’. It would be 
absurd, of course, to attribute to a poet any rigid 
psychological nomenclature ; but no one denies that 
νοῦς in Pindar is predominantly, though not ex- 
clusively, an intellectual faculty*; and in Greek 
philosophy itself, even, I believe, in Stoicism, νοῦς 
is never the merely szccum lumen, the clear, cold 
light, which we are sometimes in the habit of calling 
reason. The dry soul, says Heraclitus, is the wisest : 
avn ἕηρὴ ψυχὴ σοφωτάτη : but, we must remember, 
it was made of fire. 

In classical Greek lyric poetry, other than Pindar, 
there is no certain trace of the ideas we are now 
considering. The younger Melanippides, who died 
perhaps about 413 B.c., has left a striking fragment 
of a prayer, addressed presumably to Dionysus*: 

κλῦθί μοι, ὦ πάτερ, 
θαῦμα βροτῶν, τᾶς ἀειζώου 
μεδέων ψυχᾶς. 
‘“Hear me, O Father, honoured of mortal men, 
thou that art lord of the ever-living soul.” 


If the whole of this poem had survived, it is possible 
that some further light would be thrown on the 
subject of this lecture. Aeschylus has one or two 
definite suggestions of the divine affinity of the 
soul, notably in the passage where he speaks of the 


eae 7,.bergk. 

* Διός τοι νόος μέγας κυβερνᾷ, etc., Pyth. 5. 122; πάντα ἴσαντι 
vow, tid. 3. 29. See Buchholz, Sittliche Weltanschauung d. Pind. 
u. Aesth. p. 24. 

> Fr. 6 Bergk. 


The soul wn lyric poets and tragedy 4 


mind's eye as seeing clearly during sleep, whereas 
in the day men see not the future: 
evdovoa yap φρὴν ὄμμασιν λαμπρύνεται, 
ἐν ἡμέρᾳ δὲ μοῖρ᾽ ἀπρόσκοπος βροτῶν". 

The notion underlying this passage, and I think 
also a passage in the Agamemnon’, is the same 
as we have already found in the fragments of 
Pindar and Aristotle. In sleep the soul is to a 
certain extent released from the shackles of the 
body, and foresees the future by virtue of her 
natural affinity with the gods. In harmony with 
this conception, Aeschylus attaches great weight to 
revelation by means of dreams; and even when the 
body is awake, in moments of ecstatic elevation, 
such as he portrays in the person of Cassandra, and 
in those dim forebodings of futurity that so often 
haunt the mind of the Chorus in the Ovesteza, the 
soul appears to give proof of her connexion with 
the divine. Nowhere in Aeschylus, however, is this 
doctrine brought into relationship with the belief 
in immortality, as it is by Pindar; nor, indeed, 
except in recognising a judgment and punishments 
—never, I believe, rewards—hereafter, and in one 
or two further details, do the eschatological pictures 
of Aeschylus differ very much from those in Homer, 
except that the all-pervading gloom is deeper and 
more intense. With regard to Sophocles, | will 
only say that although Dronke has rightly called 

' Bum, 104 f. 

* 189 ff. στάζει δ᾽ ἔν θ᾽ ὕπνῳ κτλ. See Headlam in Οὐ, Rev. for 
19903, p- 241, 


42 The Dwine Origin of the Soul 


attention to certain exquisite touches of religious 
mysticism in his plays, for example ἀντὶ μυρίων μίαν 
ψυχήν", the particular subject we are now discussing 
cannot be illustrated from him. With Euripides 
the case is different, and we shall find that the form 
in which he expresses the idea of the soul’s divinity 
is of the highest interest and importance in con- 
nexion with later philosophical thought in Greece. 
But before we speak of Euripides himself, it is 
necessary to say something about the sources of 
that distinctive type of theology with which in his 
plays and fragments the notion of man’s relationship 
to God is associated. 

In the age of Euripides, the concept of a creative 
or world-forming ous or Reason had been made 
familiar to Greek thought by Anaxagoras’ epoch- 
making declaration, πάντα χρήματα ἣν ὁμοῦ: εἶτα 
νοῦς ἐλθὼν αὐτὰ διεκόσμησε": “when all things were 
together, Reason came and set them in order.” 
Whether the creative vots of Anaxagoras was a 
purely incorporeal or as we should say spiritual 
substance or not, is a question still debated; but 
this much at least is clear, that if it was corporeal, 
the material of which it was composed differed so 
much from every other kind of matter that it did 
not deserve to be called matter at all. To call it by 
the question-begging epithet of “thought-matter” 
or ‘‘thought-stuff,’ as Windelband does, throws no 
light upon its nature, besides being in my judgment 
a forced and unnatural translation of the Greek 

+ O. C. 498. 2 ap. Diog. Laert. 11. 6. 


The Nous of Anaxagoras 43 


word νοῦς. Gomperz talks vaguely of “a kind of 
fluid or aether,” a “curious reasoning fluid,” “of an 
extremely refined and mobile materiality’.” Every 
such suggestion appears to me incompatible with 
the well-known criticism in the P/aedo, where Plato 
characteristically blames Anaxagoras, because after 
announcing that Mind is the cause of everything, 
he made little or no use of this great principle in 
explaining the constitution of the Universe, but had 
recourse to “airs and aethers and waters and many 
other such absurdities’. The opposition in this 
passage between Vows on the one hand, and the 
“airs and aethers” on the other, tells strongly 
against the identification of Nous with any substance 
of the kind; and, indeed, according to Anaxagoras 
himself, air and aether are among the substances 
which Nous originally separated off from the 
primeval mixture or chaos’. It is impossible fully 
to discuss the matter here: I will only say that I 
agree with Heinze‘ and Arleth’ in holding that 
Anaxagoras probably intended us to understand by 
Nous an incorporeal essence, although in the absence 
of an accepted philosophical terminology he failed 
to make the new idea absolutely clear. There are 
still two points in connexion with Anaxagoras 
theory of which my subject requires me to remind 


1 Greek Thinkers (E.T.), 1216, 1217. 

* Phaedo 98 C. 

3 Fr. 2 Diels (Fragmente der Vorsokrattker). 

4 Ueber d. Novs 4. Anaxagoras (Leipzig, 1890). 
5. Archiv 5 Gesch. 4. Philos. vi. 461 ff. 


44 The Divine Origin of the Soul 


you. The world-ordering Reason which he describes 
is transcendent rather than immanent, although its 
immanence in certain things is not denied: ἔστιν 
οἷσι δὲ Kat νοῦς ἔνι. And finally, although this 
Nous possesses many of the attributes and dis- 
charges many of the functions which later philo- 
sophy ascribed to the Deity, Anaxagoras in his 
extant fragments nowhere calls it God. 

Turn now for a little to the fragments of 
Diogenes of Apollonia, who lived in Athens during 
the latter part of the fifth century B.c., and whose 
philosophy is in effect little more than a revision 
of the physical theory of Anaximenes in the light 
of Anaxagoras’ theory of Mind. The primary 
substance, says Diogenes, of which all other things 
are only particular forms or differentiations, is 
“great and strong and eternal and immortal and 
possessed of much knowledge” (πολλὰ εἰδός ἐστι)", 
being able “to preserve the measures of all things, 
winter and summer, night and day, rains and winds 
and sunny weather’.” ‘By means of Air,” he says 
in another fragment, ‘‘all are steered and over all 
Air has power. For this very thing seems to me 
God” (αὐτὸ γάρ μοι τοῦτο θεὸς δοκεῖ εἶναι)", “and 
I believe that it reaches to everything and disposes 
everything andjis present in everything.... There are 
many forms of living creatures many in number, 
resembling one another neither in appearance nor 
in way of life nor in intelligence owing to the 


1 Fr. 11 Diels. * Fr. 8 Diels. 3 Fr. 3 Diels. 
4 Geds is Usener’s certain emendation for ἔθος. 


Diogenes of Apollonia 45 


multitude of differentiations; but yet they all live 
and see and hear by virtue of the same element, 
and all of them too derive their intelligence from 
the same source’.” The Air within us, that is, our 
reason, Diogenes called a “little part of God” 
(μικρὸν μόριον τοῦ θεοῦ)". From these extracts you 
will see in the first place that Diogenes materializes 
the vovs of Anaxagoras in the element of Air: 
secondly, that he expressly identifies this noetic Air 
with Οοά-- αὐτὸ γάρ μοι τοῦτο θεὸς δοκεῖ εἶναι: 
and thirdly, that this divine noetic Air is ποῖ 
transcendent, but only immanent—an all-pervading 
cosmic Deity, like the λόγος of the Stoics. 

I have treated thus briefly of Anaxagoras and 
Diogenes not so much on their own account, as 
because of the light which they throw on certain 
highly characteristic passages of Euripides. The 
ancients were fond of calling Euripides the “ philo- 
sopher upon the stage.” Browning, I think, shews 
truer insight when he makes him say, 

“1 incline to poetize philosophy ” ; 
and it is with this poetical interpretation of the 
doctrine of Diogenes that I now proceed to deal. 
In discussing poetry, more especially dramatic 
poetry, we must of course be mindful of Browning's 
indignant protest, 

“Which of you did I enable 
Once to slip inside my breast, 


There to catalogue and label 
What I like least, what love best?’ 


ep * Diels? pe 338° 7. 


46 The Dwine Origin of the Soul 


No ancient poet has suffered so much as Euripides 
both in his own lifetime and afterwards from the 
vulgar species of gallery criticism that hisses the 
stage-villain. I may nevertheless be allowed to 
express my personal belief that the passages about 
to be discussed reflect a tone of feeling peculiarly 
congenial to the great poet of humanity, for a 
reason which will afterwards appear. 

Let us now consider some of the passages in 
question. We have seen that Diogenes identifies 
the all-pervading Air with God. To this theory 
Euripides has an allusion in the famous prayer of 
Hecabe in the 7voades’: 

ὦ γῆς ὄχημα, κἀπὶ γῆς ἔχων ἕδραν 

ὅστις TOT εἶ σύ, δυστόπαστος εἰδέναι, 

Ζεύς, εἴτ᾽ ἀνάγκη φύσεος, εἴτε νοῦς βροτῶν, 
προσηυξάμην σε" πάντα γὰρ & ἀψόφου 
βαίνων κελεύθου κατὰ δίκην τὰ θνήτ᾽ ayes: 


‘‘O Earth’s upholder, throned upon the Earth,” ete. : 


for Anaximenes, the philosophical master of Dio- 
genes, taught that the earth ‘rides upon the air” 
(ἐποχεῖται τῷ ἀέρι), and also that “just as our Soul, 
which is Air, holds us together, so also breath and 
Air encompass the whole Universe’.” You will 
remember that Plato, too, in speaking of this 
theory, compares the Air to a βάθρον or pedestal 
supporting the earth®. For the most part, however, 
when Euripides writes in this vein, it is Aether and 
not Air which he calls Zeus. In a poet, of course, 


1 884 ff. 2 Diels p:' 22'§ 6, 25 § 2. 
δ Phaedo 99 B. 


The Aether in Eurttides 47 


we ought not to expect a clear distinction between 
these two concepts, although Anaxagoras had 
already differentiated them. Euripides, no doubt, 
prefers the word “Aether” partly as having a 
greater wealth of poetical and religious associations 
than “Air.” Thus in one fragment’ we read 
γαῖα μεγίστη καὶ Διὸς Αἰθήρ 
“Mightiest Earth and Aether of Zeus” ; 
that is, I believe, not Aether “home of Zeus,” 
though Euripides sometimes describes the element 
in that way, but just “ Zeus’s Aether,” the Aether in 
which Zeus consists, the Aether of which Zeus is 
made, in no respect different from Zeus himself. 
The remainder of the fragment clearly shews that 
Zeus is here identified with Aether. “Aether,” 
continues the poet, “is the father of men and gods ; 
and Earth receives into her womb the falling rain 
of dewy drops, and bears mortal men, aye, and 
food, and the tribes of wild beasts.” But the most 
characteristic example in Euripides of this identifica- 
tion is contained in the well-known lines : 
ὁρᾷς τὸν ὑψοῦ τόνδ᾽ ἄπειρον αἰθέρα 
καὶ γῆν πέριξ ἔχονθ᾽ ὑγραῖς ἐν ἀγκάλαις ; 
τοῦτον νόμιζε Ζῆνα, τόνδ᾽ ἡγοῦ θεόν᾽: 
thus translated by Mr Way: 
“Seest thou the boundless ether there on high 
That folds the earth around with dewy arms? 
This deem thou Zeus, this reckon one with God.” 
1 839 Nauck’. 
2 Fr. 941. Cf. 877 ἀλλ᾽ αἰθὴρ τίκτει σε, κόρα, Ζεὺς ὃς 
ἀνθρώποις ὀνομάζεται. 


48 The Divine Origin of the Soul 
There is more than a touch of what W. K. Clifford 


called ‘“‘cosmic emotion” in these verses. Nowhere, 
however, does ancient literature furnish a more 
perfect expression of cosmic feeling or a finer 
example of the poetical treatment of a philosophical 
conception than we meet with in a less known 
fragment of Euripides descriptive of the aetherial 
creative reason indwelling in the world: 
σὲ τὸν αὐτοφυᾶ, τὸν év αἰθερίῳ 
ῥύμβῳ πάντων φύσιν ἐμπλέξανθ᾽, 
ὃν πέρι μὲν φῶς, πέρι δ᾽ ὀρφναία 
νὺξ αἰολόχρως, ἀκριτός T ἄστρων 
ὄχλος ἐνδελεχῶς ἀμφιχορεύει". 
“Thee, self-begotten, who in ether rolled 
Ceaselessly round, by mystic links dost bind 
The nature of all things, whom veils enfold 
Of light, of dark night flecked with gleams of gold, 
Of star-hosts dancing round thee without end.” 


Mr Way, to whom this translation is due, justly 
compares the familiar lines of Wordsworth : 


“T have felt 
A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean, and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: 
A motion and a spirit that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things.” 


We may say, I think, that in this all-pervading 
spirit, “τῆς soul of all the worlds,” as he sometimes 


' 593 Nauck? 


Euripides and Wordsworth AQ 


calls it, Wordsworth finds the true and essential 
unity of Nature—it embraces, as Euripides would 
have said, the ‘‘nature of all things,” 


“Even as one essence of pervading light 
Shines in the brightest of ten thousand stars 
And the meek worm that feeds her lonely lamp 
Couched in the dewy grass.” 


The parallel between Euripides and Wordsworth is 
here complete; and in Virgil, too, we have exactly 
the same conception : 


deum namque ire per omnes 
terrasque tractusque maris caelumque profundum’. 


Some may be disposed to call this philosophy, 
others will call it poetry, and others, perhaps, 
religion; but in truth it is only one particular way 
of trying to express that omnipresent unity which 
poetry and religion make us feel, which science also 
presupposes, and which it is perhaps the ultimate 
goal of a philosophy of the sciences—Plato, at least, 
believed it was—to demonstrate and apprehend. 
But to return. I think it is deserving of particular 
notice that in each of the three poets I have 
named, this kind of poetical pantheism, or Nature- 
mysticism, as it may more appropriately be called, 
is accompanied not only by a deeper sense of 
the unity between man and nature, but also by a 
profounder sympathy with ‘human weal and woe” 
than we readily find elsewhere. It was a true 
instinct that prompted Tennyson to put together in 


' Georgics 4. 221 f.: also in Aenezd 6. 724 ff. 


50 The Divine Origin of the Soul 


a single stanza these two characteristics of Virgil's 
poetry : 
“Thou that seest Universal 
Nature moved by Universal Mind ; 
Thou majestic in thy sadness 
At the doubtful doom of human kind.” 

The power inherent in Nature dwells also ‘‘in the 
mind of man,’ so that the link which binds us to 
the one unites us also to the other. You will 
remember that the later Stoics expressly founded 
their doctrine of human brotherhood on the presence 
in all men of the κοινὸς λόγος, or universal reason 
that “moves through all things, mingling with the 
great and lesser lights’.”. Marcus Aurelius, for 
example, reminds us that man’s brotherhood with 
all mankind depends not on blood, or the generative 
seed, but on community in mind (νοῦ κοινωνία): 
each man’s mind, he says, is God and an efflux 
from God?; and God is εἷς διὰ πάντων καὶ οὐσία 
μία, “one God, one essence stretching through all 
things’,” present in Nature as well asin man. The 
humanism of Euripides is not an intellectual dogma, 
but the language of the heart; yet it is more than a 
mere accident—I would rather say it is the operation 
of a law of nature—that the most profoundly human 
of tragedians should have been the author of the 
greatest nature-drama of antiquity, I mean, of 
course, the Aacchae. 

So far, I have spoken only of the peculiar kind 


* Hymn of Cleanthes 12 f. 
+ MSG; * Vii: 8: 


Nature-mysticism of Euripides 51 


of poetical theology which is sometimes found in 
Euripides. That which Pindar calls ‘‘the gods "— 
τὸ yap ἐστι μόνον ἐκ GeGv—has become, under the 
influence, perhaps, of Diogenes, an immanent, all- 
embracing aetherial substance designated by the 
name of Zeus. Let us now turn from the divine 
to the human, and consider one or two of those 
passages in which the poet has in view the doctrine 
of man’s affinity to God. The fragment most 
commonly cited by the ancients in this connexion 
is the line 


ὃ νοῦς yap ἡμῶν ἐστιν ἐν ἑκάστῳ θεός". 
“'The reason in each one of us is God.” 


Our first impression is that we have here the same 
sentiment as that of Dante, “ Mind is that culmi- 
nating and most precious part of the soul, which is 
Deity’. If we look closer, however, we shall see 
that the emphasis is on νοῦς and not on θεός: 
Euripides means there is no God but reason ; and 
so the line was explained by Nemesius. This is 
not mysticism, but rationalism, in the sense in which 
the word is used in ‘“‘ Euripides the rationalist.” In 
the prayer of Hecabe it is difficult to say whether 
the words Ζεύς, εἴτ᾽ ἀνάγκη φύσεος, εἴτε νοῦς 
Bporav—‘ Zeus, whether thou art Nature's law or 
mind of man”—are meant to be understood in 
the rationalistic or in the mystical sense. Per- 
haps the latter interpretation is the more probable, 
seeing that Hecabe has already spoken οἱ 


1 Fr. 1018. 2 Convito ul. ¢. ii, tr. K. Hillard. 
4—2 


52 The Divine Origin of the Soul 


Zeus in language suggested by the theory of 
Diogenes, according to which the mind of man is 
a form of that universally diffused aerial substance 
which Diogenes holds to be God. I do not think 
the two alternatives ἀνάγκη φύσεος and νοῦς βροτῶν 
are intended to be rigidly construed; if Zeus, as 
Hecabe implies, is omnipresent Air or Aether, he is 
at once the law of Nature—an allusion, I think, to 
Democritus and the Atomists—and the mind of 
man. The real emphasis is on the last line—xara 
δίκην ta Ovyr ayes: “whatever Zeus may be, the 
sceptre of his kingdom,” Hecabe means, “15 justice.” 
But interpret this passage as we may, the doctrine 
of the kinship between the mind of man and the 
cosmic mind or aether is clearly involved in two 
lines of the Afecena. The speaker is Theonoe, to 
whose character, as Mr Pearson says, ‘‘an element 
of mysticism is appropriate.” 
ὁ νοῦς 
τῶν κατθανόντων ζῇ μὲν οὔ, γνώμην δ᾽ ἔχει 
ἀθάνατον, εἰς ἀθάνατον αἰθέρ᾽ ἐμπεσών". 
“ Albeit the mind 

Of the dead live not, deathless consciousness 

Still hath it, when in deathless aether merged’.” 
Here, of course, we have nothing but ἃ highly 
philosophised interpretation of the idea underlying 
the well-known fifth-century epitaph on the Athenians 
who fell at Potidaea: ‘“ Aether received their souls, 
and earth their bodies: by the gates of Potidaea 


1 Hel. 1014 fff. 
? Way’s translation (substituting “ mind” for ‘soul ”). 


Phenomena of life and death 53 


they were slain’.” In the background there is the 
theory, derived, no doubt, from Anaxagoras, that 
absolute creation and absolute destruction have no 
place in the economy of nature; the phenomena we 
call life and death are only the temporary union 
and subsequent dissolution of pre-existing and 
imperishable elements. The bearing of this theory 
on anthropology is thus expressed by Euripides in a 
fragment to which 1 have already referred: “All 
things go back whence they came: that which was 
born of Earth to Earth, and that which sprang from 
the seed of Aether returns to the firmament of 
Heaven’.” You will further notice that in Euripides 
it is not, as in the epitaph, ψυχή, but νοῦς, that 
returns to the aetherial element. Elsewhere, in 
agreement with Epicharmus (if the fragments are 
really by Epicharmus’), he calls the divine element 
in man—the element that rejoins the aether—by the 
name of πνεῦμα, 
πνεῦμα μὲν πρὸς αἰθέρα 
τὸ σῶμα δ᾽ εἰς γῆν“. 
It is interesting in this connexion to observe that 
each of these two terms, νοῦς and πνεῦμα, occupies 
a somewhat analogous position not only in the 
psychology of Stoicism, but also in the writings of 
St Paul, according to whom the highest part of us, 
the πνεῦμα, “is what it is by virtue of its affinity to 
God’,” ‘“‘an element,” as Dr Swete has said, “ corre- 
ΤΑΙ͂Σ ay? 2 Fr. 839. 


* 245, 265 Kaibel. * Suppl. 533 f. 
δ Sanday and Headlam, Romans, p. 196. 


54 The Divine Origin of the Soul 


sponding to the Divine Spirit and fitted to be the 
sphere of His operations’,” while νοῦς, in the words 
of another theologian, is in St Paul just “the πνεῦμα 
operative as a faculty of knowledge directed toward 
Divine things’.” In Euripides, perhaps, it may be 
doubted whether πνεῦμα really means much more 
than “breath”; but νοῦς certainly does, and in this 
respect there seems to me a real analogy between 
the Greek and Christian thinker. Still more 
characteristically philosophical is the distinction 
which the poet here draws between life and con- 
sciousness. The mind, when reabsorbed in aether, 
no longer lives, that is to say, it has no personal 
or individual existence, but it nevertheless shares in 
the consciousness belonging to the universal spirit. 
The passage we are now discussing is, I believe, 
the earliest explicit affrmation in Greek literature 
of the kind of cosmic immortality which Aristotle 
ascribes to his νοῦς ποιητικός, and which Marcus 
Aurelius also had in view when he wrote the words: 
“You will disappear in him who gave you being ; 
or rather you will be changed and reabsorbed into 
his generative reason” (paddov δὲ ἀναληφθήσῃ εἰς 
τὸν λόγον αὐτοῦ τὸν σπερματικὸν κατὰ μεταβολήν)". 
The ethical and religious value of this conception 
depends on the extent to which it emphasises the 
prospect of reunion with the divine, rather than 
the consequent extinction of our individuality. To 
what heights of almost ecstatic enthusiasm it could 

* Hastings, Dictionary of the Bible, τι. p. 409 a. 

Ὁ Findlay in Hastings, Δα 1. p. 720b. 


9 
- 


IV. 14. 


Cosmic wmmortalty 55 


sometimes lift the poet may be seen from an 
extraordinary fragment which would probably have 
been denounced as a Neoplatonic forgery, if it had 
not been referred to by Plutarch as well as quoted 
by Clement: ‘‘ Upon my back sprout golden wings: 
my feet are fitted with the winged sandals of the 
Sirens: and I shall soar to the aetherial firmament 
to unite with Zeus ”"—Znvi tpocpetEwv’. I think it 
probable that Zeus in this fragment stands for the 
ἀθάνατος αἰθήρ with which Euripides elsewhere 
identifies the god. 

In an exhaustive discussion of Euripides’ treat- 
ment of the subject before us, we should have to 
take account of many other passages, and particularly 
of those in which he alludes to the Orphic and 
Pythagorean view that the body is the prison-house 
or tomb of the soul: σώμα σῆμα". But it is prefer- 
able, I think, in what remains of my allotted time, 
to draw your attention, first, to one or two traces of 
the doctrine of the soul’s divinity in the discourses 
of the historical Socrates, and afterwards to the part 
which this doctrine plays in the philosophy of Plato. 

The central idea of Socrates’ teaching has justly 
been called Noocracy; what he desired above all 
things to establish was the rule of Reason alike in 
the individual and in the state. In like manner, 
according to Xenophon, he sometimes represented 
the Godhead as the reason or wisdom indwelling 
in the world (ἡ ἐν παντὶ φρόνησις). No doubt 

1 Fr. git. 2 Fr. 638, 833. 
Σ᾿ Mem. \. 4. 17. 


56 The Divine Origin of the Soul 


Socrates himself developed the notion on practical 
rather than theoretical lines, using it as a motive to 
encourage piety, by dwelling on the unwearied zeal 
with which this cosmic intelligence consults the 
interests of man—for his teleology is almost pain- 
fully anthropocentric; but there is none the less a 
real analogy between the Socratic conception and 
the philosophical theory we have been discussing. 
And in at least one passage of the A/emorabzha 
Socrates definitely suggests that the human mind is 
itself only a portion of the world-informing Reason, 
which, according to Xenophon, he _ occasionally 
identified with God. Xenophon is relating a con- 
versation between Socrates and Aristodemus, and 
has reached the point at which the young man, 
though originally disposed to ridicule the belief in 
gods, is constrained to allow that there is some little 
force in the argument from design. ‘Well now,” 
says Socrates, ‘‘do you suppose that you have a 
little wisdom yourself, and yet that there is no 
wisdom to be found elsewhere? And that, too, 
when you know that you have in your body only a 
small fragment of the mighty earth, and a little 
portion of the great waters, and of the other ele- 
ments, extending far and wide, you received, I 
suppose, a little bit of each towards the framing of 
your body? Mind alone, forsooth”—vodv δὲ dpa 
yovov—adds Socrates, sarcastically, ‘which is no- 
where to be found, you seem by some lucky chance 
or other to have snatched up from nowhere’.” In 
1 Mem. τ. 4. 8. 


Socrates and the divinity of the soul 57 


its full significance, the implication contained in this 7 
concluding sentence is that the soul or rather the 
mind (νοῦς) of man is, as the Stoics said, a fragment 
or ἀπόσπασμα of the universal mind or God; but 
the doctrine is not elsewhere touched upon by the 
Socrates of the Memorabitia, at least in this 
particular form, although there is one other passage 
where he pronounces the soul to be divine’. 

The speech of the dying Cyrus in the Cyropaedia 
of Xenophon supplies some additional examples of 
the type of thought which I am trying to illustrate, 
and in particular makes the doctrine of the divinity 
of soul into an argument for immortality and divina- 
tion. In words that irresistibly recall the Phaedo of 
Plato, Cyrus expresses a disposition to believe that 
the soul, or rather the vovs or reason, survives 
the moment of death, and being then pure and 
uncontaminated by communion with the body— 
ἄκρατος καὶ kafapds—attains a measure of intelli- 
gence far beyond what it has hitherto enjoyed., 
When the body dissolves, its component factors, 
Cyrus says, return to the elements with which they 
are akin; and what of the soul? We cannot see 
it as it passes, but neither do we see it while it 
animates the body. Presumably therefore—this we 
are left to infer—the soul likewise, in virtue of its 
divinity, returns to the divine. Yet another reason \ 
is given by Cyrus for supposing that our intelligence 
is heightened after death. In sleep, which is the 
image and counterpart of death, the soul most 

1 See Mem. Iv. 3. 14. 


58 The Divine Origin of the Soul 


fully realises its kinship with the Godhead, and 
penetrates the veil that usually hides from us the 
future; and the explanation is that during sleep 
more than at any other time the soul is freed from 
the dominion of the body’. For the origin of these 
and similar views, which only make explicit what is 
already implicit in the fragment of Pindar, we must 
doubtless look to the Pythagorean doctrine of the 
body as the sepulchre of the soul; but what I wish 
to suggest is that it is perfectly possible—for my 
own part I think it highly probable—that the 
historical Socrates sometimes conversed in this 
way. The Cyropaedia is permeated, of course, by 
Socratic ideas; and in this instance the parallel 
between Xenophon and Plato is in favour, so far 
as it goes, of the presence in their common master 
of a similar strain or tendency of thought. Nor 
are such ideas otherwise than in harmony with the 
temperament of Socrates. Although no one ever 
served the cause of Reason better, he was not, in 
any narrow acceptation of the word, a “rationalist” 
pure and simple. His susceptibility to the influence 
of dreams, attested both by Xenophon and Plato; 
his faith in oracles; those frequent ‘pauses of 
immobility,” during which he would stand for hours 
together, as Gellius says, ‘‘zxconnivens, tmmobths, 
ersdem in vestigis, tanguam quodam secessu mentis 
atgue animz facto a corpore’”; and, above all, the 
divine sign or “voice,” the pledge and symbol of 
his intimate relationship to God—for these and 
1 Cyrop. Vul. ἡ. 19 ἢ * Noctes Att. τι. τ. 


Religious vationalism of Socrates 59 


other features we must seek analogies in the history, 
not of rationalism, but of religion. It is impossible, 
I think, to understand the historical Socrates without 
taking account of the religious as well as of the 
rationalistic elements in his character; but the link 
that unites the two is contained in the doctrine that 
Reason is itself divine: τὸ yap ἐστι μόνον ἐκ θεῶν. 

From Socrates we now pass to Plato. It would 
require a treatise to give any adequate idea of the 
extent to which this doctrine penetrates nearly the 
whole of Plato’s teaching from beginning to end of 
his long career, and I can hardly even attempt to 
shew you how, beyond all other Platonic doctrines, 
it has made Platonism live throughout the ages, not 
only in poetry, philosophy, and theology, but also, 
perhaps, in human lives. The most that I can do 
is to mention one or two different ways in which 
Plato expresses his belief in man’s affinity with the 
divine, and to indicate a few of the principal 
implications of the theory in Platonism, with some 
remarks on its connexion with later religious and 
philosophical thought. 

The nearest analogy in Plato to the kind of 
cosmic deity of earlier and later Greek philosophy 
is of course the soul of the world in the Phz/edus’ 
and Zzmaeus?: but in Plato, I need hardly say, the 
world-soul differs from the immanent Godhead of 
Diogenes and the Stoics, inasmuch as it is a purely 
immaterial or spiritual essence. In the Ph2ledus 
Plato derives the human soul from the soul of the 

' 28 c fff. * 24:6 ff 


60 The Divine Origin of the Soul 


world; and the train of reasoning by which he 
supports this derivation is only a more developed 
and expanded form of the argument employed by 
Socrates in his conversation with Aristodemus’. 
But the conception of a cosmic soul, at least in this 
particular shape, is absent from the earlier dialogues 
of Plato; and even in the 7zmaeus the human soul, 
or rather the rational and noetic part of it, is not, as 
in the P&zlebus, dependent for its origin upon the 
soul of the world, but, like the world-soul itself, 
comes directly from the supreme God or Demiurgus. 
“As concerning the sovereign part of soul within 
us,” says Plato, “that which we say, and say truly, 
dwells at the top of the body and raises us from 
earth towards our heavenly kindred, forasmuch as 
we are a heavenly and not an earthly plant—@vurov 
οὐκ ἔγγειον, ἀλλ᾽ ovpaviov—we ought to believe that 
God has given it to each of us as a daemon’,” that 
is, a genius or guardian angel to direct our lives, in 
the beautiful phrase of Menander, as it were our 
μυσταγωγὸς τοῦ βίου. It is in this passage, I 
believe, that we should seek the origin of the view 
so much insisted upon by the later Stoics, that the 
faculty of reason, to quote the words of Marcus 
Aurelius, is just the δαίμων, ὃν ἑκάστῳ προστάτην 
καὶ ἡγεμόνα 6 Ζεὺς ἔδωκεν, ἀπόσπασμα ἑαυτοῦ, ‘the 
genius, which Zeus has bestowed on every man, to 
1 290 A ff. 2 Tim. 60 A. 
; ἅπαντι δαίμων ἀνδρὶ συμπαρίσταται 
εὐθὺς γενομένῳ, μυσταγωγὸς τοῦ Piov. 


Meineke Iv. p. 238. 


Fusion of religion and metaphysics in Plato 61 


be a ruler and guide, even a fragment of himself*.” 
In other Platonic dialogues the form of expression 
is metaphysical rather than theological, though here, 
too, owing to the characteristically Platonic fusion 
of theology and metaphysics, there is still a certain 
colouring of theology, or perhaps I had better say, 
religion. In the RepudZic the soul in its essential, 
that is, its rational nature, is said to be “akin to the 
divine and immortal and ever-existent’,” that is to 
the changeless and eternal essence which Plato calls 
the Ideas: and in the Phaedo we read that when- 
ever the soul—and by the soul in this dialogue he 
means vovs—whenever the soul makes use of the 
body and its senses in any investigation, “she is 
dragged by the body into the region of the change- 
able, and like the objects she is fain to grasp, this 
way and that she wanders, confused and dizzy like 
a drunkard. But when she investigates a subject 
by herself, away she soars into the realm beyond, 
to join the pure and eternal and immortal and 
unchangeable, and, decause she ts of their kindred, 
with them she ever dwells as often as it is permitted 
her to be alone; and then she no longer wanders, 
but changes not, because she is in contact with the 
changeless*.” You will see from this passage that 
although the doctrine of the soul's celestial origin 
has now been intellectualised, its religious meaning 
is not yet lost. For the nearest parallel to such 
passages of Plato, and they are very numerous, 
we must look to the Paradiso of Dante. ‘“ Thou 


1 


Wi 27. * 611 E je co. 


62 The Divine Origin of the Soul 


shouldest know,” says Beatrice, “that all have their 
delight in proportion as their sight sinks deep into 
that Truth wherein every intellect finds rest.” 

J say no more at present about the manifold 
ways in which the infinite variety of Plato’s genius 
gives expression to the old Pindaric sentiment, τὸ 
yap ἐστι μόνον ἐκ θεῶν. Before, however, touching on 
the applications of the doctrine in Platonism, let me 
call your attention to a new and historically fruitful 
idea with which Plato enriches this ancient belief. 
The question as to the essential meaning of the 
word man—what it is in virtue of which we are said 
to be human—had hardly as yet been raised by 


_ Greek philosophy. In the view of Plato, it is just 


_the presence of this divine element that makes us| 


specifically human. Man is most truly man when| 


_he most resembles God. This suggestion is clearly 
' intended in two passages of the Republic. The first 


is where Plato is describing how the true legislative 
artist will endeavour to model the character and 
lives of men after the image of the divine. Looking 
now at natural, that is, ideal—observe how the 
natural in Plato is always the ideal—Beauty and 
Justice and Temperance, and now at the actual 
picture he is painting, he will, says Plato, blend and 
mingle institutions, like so many colours, until he 
has obtained τὸ ἀνδρείκελον, the colour and com- 
plexion of true manhood ; and he will found his idea 
of the ἀνδρείκελον on that which, when it appears 
among men, Homer himself called θεοειδές τε Kai 
‘ Canto 28. 106 ff. 


Manlike equivalent to Godlike 63 


θεοείκελον. The Manlike, in short, is the Godlike. 
The second passage occurs in the elaborate com- 
parison of human nature as it now is to a kind of 
chimaera or triple-headed creature, wearing the 
vesture of humanity, and comprising within its folds 
a many-headed monster, symbolical of desire, a lion, 
symbolical of spirit, and withal what Plato, in 
language made familiar to us by St Paul, declares 
to be the “inward man” (ὁ ἐντὸς ἄνθρωπος)", in 
other words the νοῦς or Reason. What account, 
then, Plato asks, shall we give of virtue? We will 
say that virtue consists in bringing the bestial 
elements—the lion and the ape—into subjection 
to the human, “or rather,” he continues, ‘shall 
we say, to the Divine” (τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ, μᾶλλον δὲ 
ἴσως---τῷ θείῳ). The suggestion that man 15 truly 
human just in proportion as he is divine was after- 


\wards taken up by Aristotle and the Stoics*; and 


‘no one can fail to see its hitherto unexhausted, 


perhaps for ever inexhaustible, significance in 
religion. “1 would seem,” says Aristotle, “that 
this” —meaning the divine or rational part of man_ 
—‘“is actually the self” (δόξειε δ᾽ ἂν καὶ εἶναι 
ἕκαστος τοῦτο)", “inasmuch as it is the supreme 
and better part of man.” The implication in the 

1 ξυμμιγνύντες τε καὶ κεραννύντες ἐκ τῶν ἐπιτηδευμάτων τὸ 
ἀνδρείκελον, ἀπ᾽ ἐκείνου τεκμαιρόμενοι, ὃ δὴ καὶ Ὅμηρος ἐκάλεσεν 
ἐν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις ἐγγιγνόμενον θεοειδές τε καὶ θεοείκελον Rep. 
501 Β. 

5. 589 A. = 589 D. 

4 See (for the Stoics) e.g. Marc. Aur. XII. 3. 

» the Nie. KJ ~ 9. 


64 The Divine Origin of the Soul 


epithet “better,” that the good alone is the truly 
existent, is not less Platonic than the pregnant and 
powerful phrase in which the pupil of Plato points 
the moral lesson of this and all his master’s teaching : 
ἐφ᾽ ὅσον ἐνδέχεται, ἀθανατίζειν, ‘put on the immortal, 
as far as in thee lies.” 

Consider now some of the implications of this 
theory in Platonism. Since man is by nature akin 
to the divine, the end and object of his existence 
must of necessity be ὁμοίωσις τῷ θεῷ, ‘assimilation 
to God”: the fullest possible realisation in this 
mortal life of that immortal nature which alone can 
truly be called our own. The doctrine of ὁμοίωσις 
τῷ θεῷ plays a conspicuous part in the teaching of 
Plato. ‘It is God,” he says in the Laws’, ‘“‘and 
not, as some have asserted, man, who ought to be 
to us the universal measure or standard.” This is 
the dominating motive throughout nearly the whole 
of Plato’s polemic against Homer in the second and. 
third books of the Aepuddec: the Homeric gods are 
to be discarded because they do not provide a moral 
ideal for mankind—Euripides, you remember, had 
the same idea, and so had Xenophanes before him : 
and this is also the principle of the reformed 
theology which Plato is desirous of inaugurating 
in his ideal state. In its political application, the 
ὁμοίωσις θεῷ means the establishment of a kingdom 
of righteousness upon earth: for δικαιοσύνη in the 
Republic is not really a specific virtue, but righteous- 
ness, the root and source of all the individual 

τ τ 516: 


The kingdom of righteousness 65 


virtues, the virtue about which Aristotle’, quoting 
a fragment of Euripides’, says that ‘neither the 
morning nor the evening star is so beautiful.” 
Plato in the Republic is looking for a czvitas dec— 
new heavens and a new earth, ἐν οἷς δικαιοσύνη 
κατοικεῖ: and indeed, as the argument unfolds 
itself, we behold the originally ‘“‘ Hellenic city” 
gradually changing into a celestial commonwealth, 
a παράδειγμα ἐν οὐρανῷ, as Plato himself at last 
confesses it to be*. 

If we limit our survey to the progress towards 
perfection of the individual man—and in Plato 
political is always founded upon private virtue— 
we may say, 1 think, that the realisation by the 
individual of his true and immortal nature is 
described by Plato from three main points of view. 
In the Phaedo it appears as the μελέτη θανάτου, the 
“study” or rather ‘‘ rehearsal of death,” the mortifi- 
cation of our lower nature for the sake of reviving 
the higher, dying, in short, that we may live. The 
germ of this conception is of course much older 
than Plato, as he himself points out. I will quote 
a single illustration from Heraclitus. ‘ Both living 
and dying are present in our life and in our death ; 
for when we live our souls are dead and buried in 
us, and when we die our souls revive and live®.” 
And the Orphic and Pythagorean religious discipline 
was already to a certain extent a practical illustra- 


1 Eth. Nic. V. 1. 15. * 490 Dindorf: cf. Nauck? 486. 
Ἐν Pet! i: 11. * Rep. 470 E, 592 B. 
> ap. Sext. Emp. Pyrrh. ul. 230. 

A. E. 5 


66 The Divine Origin of the Soul 


tion of the Platonic precept. You will observe, 
however, that in the fragment of Heraclitus “we” 
means rather the body than the soul, whereas in 
Plato, as we have seen, the true personality is the 
νοῦς : and it is the life of νοῦς while still imprisoned 
in the body that the Platonic medztatio mortts is 
intended to resuscitate. The soul of the lover of 
wisdom, says Plato, ‘withholds herself from pleasures 
and desires and pains and fears so far as she is 
able”; for she knows that every new indulgence 
will add to the chains from which she longs to be 
released’. We must fly away yonder, far from the 
world of sense and sensual things: χρὴ ἐνθένδε 
ἐκεῖσε φεύγειν : and the way of flight is to grow 
like unto God in righteousness, holiness, and— 
observe the characteristic addition—in wisdom?*, 
The Platonic μελέτη θανάτου or ‘rehearsal of death ” 
has often been compared with the Pauline doctrine 
of Necrosis, but the parallel deserves, I think, an 
even closer examination than it has yet received. 
There is hardly any subject of investigation which 
invites and permits one to turn so clear a light 
upon the points of contrast as well as similarity 
between Platonic and Pauline thought. One such 
contrast lies in the predominantly intellectual or 
rather noetic character of the aspiration expressed 
in Plato's ‘‘rehearsal of death.” I say predominantly 
intellectual, for it is by no means exclusively so. 
What Mr Nettleship has said of Greek philosophy 
in general is pre-eminently true of Plato. “We 
' Phaedo 82 ς ff. 2. Theaet. 176 B. 


Doctrine of vehearsal of death 67 


say that Greek moral philosophy, as compared with 
modern, lays great stress on knowledge and gives 
excessive importance to intellect. That impression 
arises mainly from the fact that we are struck by the 
constant recurrence of intellectual terminology, and 
omit to notice that reason or intellect is always 
conceived of as having to do with the good. Reason 
is to Greek thinkers the very condition of man’s 
having a moral being.... Their words for reason and 
rational cover to a great extent the ground which is 
covered by words like ‘spirit,’ ‘spiritual, and ‘ideal’ 
in our philosophy. They would have said that man 
is a rational being, where we should say that he is 
a spiritual being’.” In this way, I believe, the life 
of Reason, in Plato, becomes not only intellectual, 
but also something akin to what is afterwards called 
spiritual life: for in Platonism, as the Cambridge 
Platonists were fond of saying, it is always Reason 
which is the “candle of the Lord.” At the same 
time the contrast holds good, with the qualification 
that I have mentioned. A second and closely 
related point of difference between St Paul’s 
Necrosts and Plato’s μελέτη θανάτου is to be found 
in the strain of asceticism in the Phaedo, though 
here again the exercise of vovs brings pleasures of 
its own, the truest and purest pleasures, Plato 
says; and Gomperz is right in saying that although 
Weltflucht touched the soul of Plato, it never 
enchained it. But the really fundamental contrast 


' Lectures and Remains, 11. p. 221. 


τ 
[Ὁ 


» 


68 The Divine. Origin of the Soul 


has already been pointed out by Matthew Arnold’. 
I will venture to put it in a single phrase of St Paul, 
a phrase that as if by the touch of some heavenly 
alchemy at once transforms a philosophy into a 
religion: ἀποθανεῖν σὺν Χριστῷ. λόγον ἔχεις, 
says Marcus Aurelius, τί οὖν οὐ χρᾷ; τούτου γὰρ 
τὸ ἑαυτοῦ ποιοῦντος, τί ἄλλο θέλεις"; “thou hast 
reason: why then not use it? If reason does its 
work, what else dost thou require?” St Paul’s 
σὺν Χριστῷ supplies the something else—the driving 
power which has made the Platonic μελέτη θανάτου 
an inexhaustible source of moral inspiration through- 
out the ages. 

The second of the two aspects in which Plato , 
represents this great idea is that which is developed 
in the Syspostum and elsewhere. The object of 
adoration in that dialogue is not so much the primal 
Goodness, as the primal Beauty, the divine Beauty 
of which Plato says that it is ever-existent, alike 
uncreated and imperishable, knowing neither increase 
nor decay, beautiful always and everywhere and in 
all relations and respects; and all other things 
which we call beautiful are beautiful because they 
participate in it, yet in such a way that although 
beautiful particulars come into being and perish, the 
Ideal Beauty nevertheless suffers no diminution nor 
increase nor change of any kind at 411 The path 
of the soul in the Symposcum leads upwards from 
the lovely things of earth to those of heaven; we 


* St Paul and Protestantism, p. 53, ed. 1880. 
a PY. ES: “Vera & 


Doctrine of Tdeal Beauty 69 


should use the former as ἐπαναβαθμοί or stepping- 
stones, passing first from one to all fair bodies, next 
from corporeal beauty to the beauty of institutions 
and from institutions to sciences, until we arrive at 
the study of Ideal Beauty, and at last perceive the 
Beautiful in its true and essential nature’. “Suppose,” 
concludes Diotima, ‘‘ suppose it were granted to one 
to behold the Beautiful itself, pure and clear and 
unadulterated, not tainted by human flesh or colours 
which man has made, or any other of the countless 
vanities of mortal life, but the Divine beauty as it 
stands in its simplicity and isolation: do you think 
it would be an ignoble life that we should gaze 
thereon and ever contemplate that Beauty and hold 
communion with it? Or rather do you not think 
that in this communion only is it possible for a man, 
beholding the Beautiful with the organ wherewith 
alone it can be seen, to beget, not images of virtue 
but realities, for that with which he holds com- 
munion is not an image, but the truth, and having 
begotten and nourished true virtue to become the 
friend of God and be immortal, if ever mortal has 
attained to immortality*.” The contemplation of 
the Ideal Beauty is in Plato life—nay more, it is 
‘eternal life” --ἐνταῦθα τοῦ βίου, εἴπερ που ἄλλοθι, 
βιωτὸν ἀνθρώπῳ, θεωμένῳ αὐτὸ τὸ καλόν, This is 
the side of Platonism which has appealed in all ages 
to the religious mystic, the poet, and the artist. Of 
its influence in religious mysticism, the Bampton 
lectures of Mr Inge will supply you with many 


9 


1 211 Bf. 2 211 D—2I2 A. ἂν 211 Ἐν 


70 The Divine Origin of the Soul 


examples; in sculpture, its greatest exponent, 
perhaps, is Michael Angelo, whose sonnets also 
bear witness to the fervour of his Platonism; and 
in poetry, the central idea of the Symposzum, 
expressed by one of the Cambridge Platonists in 
the lines 

‘‘ All streams of Beauty here below 


Do from that immense Ocean flow, 
And thither they should lead again’”: 


in poetry, I say, this great conception inspires the 
whole of Dante’s Dzvzne Comedy, and finds fit 
utterance in many single passages of the Paradiso. 
“The leaves with which all the garden of the 
eternal Gardener blooms, I love in measure of the 
good transmitted to them from him’*.” And in 
another canto: ‘‘ Behold now the height and ampli- 
tude of the Eternal Worth, seeing it hath made 
itself so many mirrors in which it breaks, while 
remaining one in itself, as before®.”. A more perfect 
expression of the essential content of Platonism is 
not to be found in the writings of Plato himself. 

Thirdly, the ascent of the soul towards the 
fountain of her being is represented by Plato as 
an educational process—the pursuit of knowledge. 
This is unquestionably the most characteristic and 
fruitful point of view from which he regards the 
matter: indeed it is the point of view which ulti- 


1 John Norris (quoted by Harrison, Platonism in English 
Poetry, p. 86). ; 

? Par. 26. 64 ff. Cf. especially 77 Convito, iv. ὃ: 12. 

2 Was 29. 142 I. 


Doctrine of education 71 


mately includes and embraces all the others. In 
every human creature, he holds, there is present 
from the first an organ whose preservation is of 
more importance than a thousand eyes: since by it 
alone Truth is seen’. This faculty, ‘the vision and 
the faculty divine,” it is the business of the educator 
to nurture and develop, not to instil into his pupils 


from without : for 
“to know 
Rather consists in opening out a way 
By which the imprisoned splendour may escape 
Than in effecting entry for a light 
Supposed to be without.” 


The principle enunciated in these lines determines 
the whole of Plato’s educational method and cur- 
riculum. In earlier years the object is to bring the 
mind into unconscious harmony with the beauty of 
reason through the influence of Poetry and Art, the 
proper function of which, in Plato’s way of thinking, 
is to “track out the beautiful”—iyvevew τὴν τοῦ 
καλοῦ φύσιν᾽"---ὧϑ it is manifested in nature, in the 
human form, and in the works and characters of 
men, and embody this and this alone in the material 
with which they deal. Later, when the reasoning 
powers begin to awaken, the discipline becomes 
severely intellectual, only such studies being ad- 
mitted as are able, in Platonic phrase, to purge and 
revivify (ἐκκαθαίρειν τε καὶ avalwrvpetv®) the eye 
of the soul: but Plato is careful to insist that the 
rational faculty can never be turned from darkness 


1 Rep. 527 πὶ ? Rep. 401 C. > Rep. 527 τὰ 


72 The Divine Origin of the Soul 


to light unless the whole nature of the man is 
turned along with it; and one of the incidental 
results of the higher curriculum is to strengthen the 
moral discipline of youth by disclosing the bed-rock 
of reason on which it was founded. In the truly 
philosophic nature, according to Plato, it is the 
amor intellectuals, the passion for truth, not this or 
that portion of truth, but all truth, everywhere and 
always, that is the source of all the moral virtues” 
too—courage and high-mindedness, temperance, 
justice, kindness and the rest’. In the last analysis, 
morality, in Plato, is the love of Truth. By the 
ladder of the mathematical sciences, or as Plato is 
already beginning to call them, ‘“arts’’—1in this 
originating, as I have elsewhere tried to shew, our 
modern academic usage of the word—the mind 
slowly and laboriously climbs upward into the 
kingdom of realities; for we must get behind and 
above mathematics, behind every other single 
science, if we are really to attain to knowledge, as 
the word is understood by Plato. To this elevation 
we rise by what he calls Dialectic, in the view of 
Plato the science of sciences, above and beyond all 
other sciences, even as its final object, the Idea of 
the Good, determines all the other Ideas. If we 
may try to interpret Plato’s dream in something 
like the language of to-day, and it is a dream which 
is a little nearer to fulfilment now than in his time, 
we may say, perhaps, that the ultimate goal of 
knowledge is not even then attained when each 
* Rep. 485 a Ff. 


Plato's dialectic 73 


particular science has at last combined and correlated 
its several classes of phenomena under adequate 
generalisations and these again under one supreme 
generalisation which will constitute the ἀρχή or first 
principle of the science. Something more than this 
is needed, something like the ideal which a recent 
writer had in view when he suggested that ‘“‘in 
another age, all the branches of knowledge, whether 
relating to God or man or nature, will become the 
knowledge of ‘the revelation of a single science, 
and all things, like the stars in heaven, will shed 
their light upon one another’.” The first_principles 
of the several sciences must in their turn be corre- 
lated with one another and themselves subsumed 
under the first principle of all, which in Plato is 
the Good. It is only then that the philosopher 
becomes “8 spectator of all time and all existence,” 
only then that he recognises the essential unity of 
knowledge and understands in the fullest sense— 
observe how poetry again comes to the aid of 
science—understands how 


‘“The whole round world is every way 
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.” 


And the weapon to be employed throughout the whole 
of this enquiry is not the intuitive, but the analytic 
and discursive intellect, whose province it is by patient 
and laborious investigation to demonstrate that Unity, 
in which the intuitive intellect, by reason of its affinity 
thereto, has always and everywhere found rest. 


1 Jowett, P/afo il. p. 25. 


74 The Divine Origin of the Soul 


The dialectic of Plato, like his conception of 
Good, is an ideal, and as such unattainable, perhaps, 
ov πρακτὸν οὐδὲ κτητὸν ἀνθρώπῳ, Aristotle might 
have said. Well, it is Plato’s way to make us 


“breathe in worlds 
To which the heaven of heavens is but a veil.” 


And if we consider his dialectic simply as an ideal, 
it is, | venture to think, the kind of ideal for which, 
apart from idiosyncrasies of thought and language, 
philosophy is looking still, towards the realisation 
of which, if we believe in the unity of knowledge, 
every investigator does his part, in however humble 
a sphere, whether he studies man or nature, and 
whether he succeeds or fails, if only he is actuated 
by the love of truth. It is false to say that such an 
ideal is useless because it lies beyond our present 
powers. Some men are so constituted that they 
need the stimulus of the unattainable to make them 
reach the utmost limits of that to which they can 
attain. And in point of fact, an Ideal, as Plato well 
knew—I believe it to be the meaning of the one 
great paradox of the Ideal theory—an Ideal is from 
its very nature immanent as well as transcendent, 
always being realised in the progress we make 
towards it. Already we “know in part”: ἐκ μέρους 
γινώσκομεν. | The higher we climb the hill of 
knowledge in\this life, the nearer we come to that 
transcendent Unity—call it by what name you will, 
the Absolute, or God, or Nature; for all our names 


* 1 Cor. xiii. οἱ 


Plato's hope of ultimate perfection 75 


are but a shadow of the Truth—wherein “are all 
the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden.” 
But to Plato this life is not all: it is only a single 
stage upon our journey. The Platonic doctrine of 
immortality holds out the hope of a continuous 
advance throughout a series of lives until at last 
knowledge is made perfect. With perfect know- 
ledge, too, comes perfect goodness or ‘‘assimilation 
to God”; for knowledge in Plato transforms the 
moral as well as the intellectual nature, and the 
Form of Good, which is the source of knowledge, 
is also the fountain of virtue. And in Plato as in 
Pindar, the ultimate proof of immortality—the proof 
that lies deeper than all his arguments and yet is _ 
heard throughout them all—is the kinship of the 
human soul with the divine: τὸ γάρ ἐστι μόνον ἐκ 
bear. 


— 


In the speech delivered by St Paul before the 
council of the Areopagus, the doctrine which the 
apostle declares to be the common meeting-ground 
of Greek and Christian thought is just the doctrine 
which I have tried to explain and illustrate through- 
out this lecture. ‘‘In him we live and move and 
have our being; as certain even of your own poets 
have said, For we are also his offspring”: τοῦ yap 
καὶ γένος ἐσμέν. 1 have endeavoured to shew you 
that St Paul might with equal truth have added 
“and as certain of your own philosophers have 
said”: and I have tried to put before you what | 
believe the doctrine really means alike in Poetry 
and in Philosophy. The all-embracing and yet 


76 The Divine Origin of the Soul 


all-transcending unity, in which ‘we live and move 
and have our being” is just that ultimate reality 
which Religion, Philosophy and Poetry, each in 
its own language—remember, ὅστις ποτ᾽ εἶ σύ, 
δυστόπαστος eidévar—are trying now and always to 
interpret to the human intellect or heart; and the 
doctrine of man’s relationship to that great unity 
τοῦ yap Kat γένος éouév—is not the fading echo of a 
‘dead philosophy ”: it is still, what Plato made it, 
the ever-living watchword of idealism. 

In conclusion, I would ask you to link the 
present with the past by adding to the passages 
I have discussed the not less noble verses of our 
greatest living poet, himself a scholar in the highest 
or creative meaning of the word: 


“Mother of man’s time-travelling generations, 
Breath of his nostrils, heart-blood of his heart, 
God above all gods worshipped by all nations, 
Light above light, law beyond law thou art. 


Thy face is as a sword smiting in sunder 
Shadows and chains and dreams and iron things: 
The sea is dumb before thy face, the thunder 
Silent, the skies are narrower than thy wings. 

ΩΣ * * * Ξε %* 
All old gray histories hiding thy clear features, 
O secret spirit and sovereign, all men’s tales, 
Creeds woven of men thy children and thy creatures 
They have woven for vestures of thee and for veils. 


Thine hands, without election or exemption, 
Feed all men fainting from false peace or strife, 
O thou the resurrection and redemption, 

The godhead and the manhood and the life.” 


* Swinburne, Mater triumphalis. 


HE THE “DOCTRINE OF "File 
EOGOs UN  HERACTFIUS. 


There are few questions appertaining to the 
history of ancient philosophy which have been 
more widely and warmly debated than the meaning 
of the word λόγος in Heraclitus. By the ancients 
it was understood to mean reason—cosmic reason— 
universally diffused, present both in nature and in 
man, not of course one incorporeal entity, but 
identical with the ever-living, ever-thinking fire— 
πῦρ φρόνιμον aet(wov—which constitutes the change- 
less because ever-changing reality of things: and 
this κοινὸς λόγος or universal reason was held to 
be synonymous with God. In other words, if the 
ancients are to be trusted, the Heraclitean concept 
of Logos does not really differ from the Stoic, ex- 
cept that on its material side, Logos is in Heraclitus 
fire, whereas, according to the strictest Stoic defi- 
nition, it is aether. The ancient interpretation has 


' [The references to Professor Burnet’s Early Greek Philosophy 
are given according to the pages of the second edition except 
where otherwise stated ; but his translations are quoted from the 
first edition, which alone was published in the lifetime of James 
Adam, and the variations in the second edition are noted. | 


78 The Logos in Flerachtus 


been followed by many exponents of Heracliteanism 
in modern times, such as Bernays, Patin, Teichmiiller, 
and, with certain reservations, Zeller; but others 
have taken a different view. Thus, for example, 
Heinze denies that the attribute of intelligence or 
thought belongs to the Heraclitean Logos: it is 
merely what he calls “objective reason,’ or law, 
the universal reason manifested in the development 
of the world, a principle destitute of anything analo- 
gous to consciousness or personality: and Professor 
Burnet goes so far as to maintain, if I understand 
him rightly, that the Logos-doctrine is entirely 
Stoic, the word Logos, in the relevant passages 
of Heraclitus, meaning only “argument” or ‘dis- 
course.” It is unnecessary to say more by way 
of shewing that this is one of those subjects on 
which doctors disagree; and I have selected it as 
the theme of my discourse, not so much with the 
hope of convincing others, as with the desire of 
being fortified in my own opinion—or the reverse 
—by the discussion which I trust my paper will 
provoke. 

It will conduce to clearness if I say at the outset 
that, as at present advised, I believe the ancients 
were right in regarding the Heraclitean Logos as 
virtually identical with the Stoic, although the Stoic 
theory was of course far more fully developed and 
elaborated in detail. 

The question “What does Logos mean in 
Heraclitus?” can be settled only by an exami- 
nation of the fragments. Other evidence is ad- 


Meaning of Heractlitean Logos 79 


missible, but only by way of supplementing and 
confirming the results to which the fragments point ; 
and I will therefore confine myself, in the first in- 
stance, to Heraclitus’ own words. 

The word λόγος occurs in six of the fragments. 
In at least one of these it is used in the ordinary 
untechnical sense: βλὰξ ἄνθρωπος ἐπὶ παντὶ λόγῳ 
ἐπτοῆσθαι φιλέει: “ἃ foolish person is wont to be 
excited at every discourse.” In another much- 
disputed fragment it is difficult to say whether the 
word is technical or not: θάλασσα διαχέεται καὶ 
μετρέεται ἐς τὸν αὐτὸν λόγον ὁκοῖος πρόσθεν Hr ἢ 
γενέσθαι ἱγῆτ᾽: “the sea is poured out and mea- 
sured és τὸν αὐτὸν λόγον ὁκοῖος ἦν before it became 
earth,” or if (with Eusebius) we omit γῆ, ‘before it 
came into existence.” Leaving this fragment on 
one side, let us consider the remaining four, in 
three of which at least Logos appears to have a 
special meaning. The first is the fragment placed 
first by Mr Bywater: in all probability it was the 
opening sentence of the book*: οὐκ ἐμεῦ ἀλλὰ τοῦ 
λόγου ἀκούσαντας ὁμολογέειν σοφόν ἐστι, ἕν πάντα 
εἶναι: “Πανίηρ hearkened not to me, but to the 
Logos, it is wise to confess that all things are 


”) 


one.” It is true that Hippolytus writes δόγματος 


1 117 Bywater. 

2 23. A summary of some of the different views entertained 
on this passage will be found in Patrick’s Heraclitus, p. 116. For 
Burnet’s view see Early Greek Philosophy’, p. 148. 

> There is nothing in Arist. Ref. m1. 1407> 14 to contradict 
this supposition: for the words ἐν τῇ ἀρχῇ αὐτοῦ τοῦ συγγράμματος 
need not mean “‘in the first sentence.” 


80 The Logos in Heraclitus 


instead of λόγου: but Bernays’ emendation has 
been accepted by all subsequent commentators, 
and the word δόγμα does not occur till at least a 
century after Heraclitus. On this fragment I will 
at present only add that Professor Burnet’s trans- 
lation, ‘“‘It is wise to hearken not to me but my 
argument’,” involves an antithesis which, though 
intelligible enough, is only partial, and scarcely 
adequate, I think, to the prophetic fervour of the 
sentence, particularly if these words began the 
book. ‘“ Hearken not unto me, but to the Logos”: 
that is, it is not I, Heraclitus, who speak, nor any- 
thing that has to do with me, such as my argument, 
but the Logos that speaks ¢hrough me: I am the 
mouthpiece of the Logos, and that is why I call on 
you to hear, not me, but it. Here, as elsewhere, 
Heraclitus speaks as if he believed himself to be 
inspired. ‘‘ The Sibyl,” you remember, “ with fren- 
zied mouth, uttering words unsmiling, unadorned, 
and unanointed, reaches with her voice throughout 
a thousand years by reason of the σοῦ "ἢ" 

The second fragment seems to have followed 
immediately on the first. τοῦ δὲ λόγου τοῦδ᾽ édv- 
Tos αἰεὶ ἀξύνετοι γίνονται ἄνθρωποι καὶ πρόσθεν ἢ 
ἀκοῦσαι καὶ ἀκούσαντες τὸ πρῶτον. γινομένων γὰρ 
πάντων κατὰ τὸν λόγον τόνδε ἀπείροισι ἐοίκασι 
πειρώμενοι καὶ ἐπέων καὶ ἔργων τοιουτέων ὁκοίων 
ἐγὼ διηγεῦμαι, διαιρέων ἕκαστον κατὰ φύσιν καὶ 
φράζων ὅκως ἔχει. τοὺς δὲ ἄλλους ἀνθρώπους λαν- 
θάνει ὁκόσα ἐγερθέντες ποιέουσι, ὅκωσπερ ὁκόσα 


1 [In ed. 2 “to my Word.” | ? ae. 


Fragments relating to the Logos 81 


εὕδοντες ἐπιλανθάνονται. ‘This Logos is always 
existent, but men fail to understand it both before 
they have heard it, and when they have heard it 
for the first time. For, although all things happen 
according to (or rather by way of) this Logos, men 
seem as if they had no acquaintance with it when 
they make acquaintance with such works and words 
as I expound, dividing each thing according to its 
nature, and explaining how it really is. The rest 
of mankind ”—that is to say, presumably, all except 
Heraclitus, who professes to have read the riddle 
of the Universe—‘‘are unconscious of what they do 
when they are awake, just as they forget what they 
do when asleep’.” 

The first sentence—rtov δὲ λόγου τοῦδ᾽ ἐόντος 
αἰεὶ ἀξύνετοι γίνονται ἄνθρωποι καὶ πρόσθεν ἢ ἀκού- 
σαι καὶ ἀκούσαντες τὸ πρῶτον---ἰβ thus translated 
by Burnet. ‘Though this discourse’ is true ever- 
more, yet men are as unable to understand it when 
they hear it for the first time as before they have 
heard it at all.” No doubt ἐόντος can mean ‘‘is 
ἀγα ἡ: but I submit that the expression ‘‘is true 
evermore,” if ““evermore” means anything, would 
suggest that it is possible for truth to be some- 
times true and sometimes false. In point of fact, 
according to Professor Burnet’s view, the adverb 
adds nothing to ἐόντος : if a discourse is true, it is 
ipso facto always true. It is not like Heraclitus 


ars ? [In ed. 2 “ Word.” 
> [Burnet ὁ οὖ p. 146, says that in Ionic ἐών means “true” 
when coupled with words like Adyos. | 


A. E. 6 


82 The Logos τῇ Heraclitus 


to waste his words. The interpretation which | 
advocate gives its full and proper meaning to αἰεί. 
The Being or Entity which Heraclitus calls λόγος--- 
the Logos that speaks through him—is ever-exis- 
tent, uncreated and imperishable: that is what the 
philosopher means ; and we may compare not only 
what he says himself about the πῦρ ἀείζωον, the 
“ever-living” Fire that ‘““was and is and shall be 
always’,” but also the manifest echo of ἐόντος αἰεί 
in the hymn of Cleanthes: oof ἕνα γίγνεσθαι πάν- 
των λόγον αἰὲν ἐόντα" “so that all things form 
one Logos ever-exzstent.” Consider next what is 
involved in the words ἀξύνετοι γίνονται ἄνθρωποι 
καὶ πρόσθεν ἢ ἀκοῦσαι καὶ ἀκούσαντες TO 
πρῶτον. Professor Burnet translates: ‘‘men are 
as unable to understand it when they hear it for 
the first time as before they have heard it at all”: 
but the two members of the clause καὶ πρόσθεν ἢ 
ἀκοῦσαι and καὶ ἀκούσαντες τὸ πρῶτον are equally 
important in the Greek, and there is no indication 
that the first should be subordinated to the second : 
the natural translation is “men fail to understand 
the Logos both defore they have heard it, and when 
they have heard it for the first time.” It is clear 
that Heraclitus is blaming his fellow-men for not 
understanding the Logos defore as well as after he 
expounds it: and the censure is virtually repeated 
in the next line: ‘‘men seem as if they had no 
experience of the 1 οροβ-- -ἀπείροισι éotkac.—when 
they make acquaintance with my account of it.” 


1 30. 2 line 21. 


Discussion of fragments 83 


And such a censure is unjustified and meaningless 
unless Heraclitus believed it possible for his readers 
to apprehend the Logos otherwise than through the 
ear. The lesson, Heraclitus seems to say, is one 
that he who runs may read; it is present in our 
daily life and conversation ; but men are altogether 
sunk in spiritual and intellectual slumber: ‘they 
know as little of what they are doing when awake 
as they remember what they do in sleep.’ As he 
complains elsewhere, they speak and act “85 if they 
were asleep’”: they ‘do not understand the things 
with which they meet, nor when they are taught do 
they have knowledge of them, although they think 
they have®.” They are at variance with that with 
which they live in most continual intercourse’, being 
unable, in short, to interpret their own experience, 
for ‘eyes and ears are bad witnesses to those who 
have barbarian souls‘.”. Now what is that ‘ with 
which men live in most continual intercourse” (6 
μάλιστα διηνεκέως ὁμιλέουσι)" " This fragment is 
preserved by Marcus Aurelius’, whose words are 
as follows: ᾧ μάλιστα διηνεκῶς ὁμιλοῦσι λόγῳ τῷ 
τὰ ὅλα διοικοῦντι τούτῳ διαφέρονται. Bywater at- 
tributes to Marcus the whole expression λόγῳ τῷ 
τὰ ὅλα διοικοῦντι. Diels, on the other hand, while 
rightly holding Marcus responsible for τῷ τὰ ὅλα 
διοικοῦντι, believes that λόγῳ is due to Heraclitus: 


! Cf. 94, 95 (sleepers turn aside into a world of their own, εἰς 
ἴδιον SC. κόσμον). 


5. * 93: 
ak δεν. 46. 


84 The Logos in Fleractitus 


ᾧ μάλιστα διηνεκέως ὁμιλέουσι λόγῳ, τούτῳ διαφέ- 
ρονται. For my own part, I am disposed to agree 
with Diels; but, in any case, that Heraclitus was 
thinking of the Logos may be in part inferred from 
what has been already said, and will appear more 
clearly in the sequel. 

It would seem then that the Logos, whose 
prophet Heraclitus claims to be, is something of 
which we already have experience, even before we 
read its message in the book. It is, moreover, 
universal in its operation: ‘‘everything happens 
according to this Logos”—y.wopevwr yap πάντων 
κατὰ Tov λόγον τόνδε. Are we to suppose then that 
the Logos is only as it were the universal law pre- 
vailing throughout the realm of nature and humanity, 
what Heinze calls objective reason, devoid of active 
rationality or thought? Nothing has yet been said 
to exclude such a view; and κατὰ τὸν λόγον τόνδε 
“in accordance with this Logos” might seem at first 
to favour it. The phrase κατ᾽ ἔριν, however, occur- 
ring in other fragments of Heraclitus—zavta κατ᾽ ἔριν 
yiveoOa’—shews that κατά, in Heraclitus, may very 
well mean “ by way of,” “ through,” without implying 
the negation of activity in the noun it governs: for 
Strife, in Heraclitus, is admittedly something active. 
And when we consider one of the other fragments 
in which the Logos is named, we shall find reason 
for believing that the Heraclitean Logos is possessed 
of intelligence. The fragment 1 refer to runs thus: 
Tov λόγου δ᾽ ἐόντος ξυνοῦ, ζώουσι ot πολλοὶ ὡς ἰδίην 

1 72 Diels. * 26): ch Ge: 


Universality of the Logos 85 


ἔχοντες φρόνησιν : “although the Logos is universal, 
most men live as if they had a private intelligence 
of theirown’.” If we remember Heraclitus’ inveterate 
tendency to antithesis and balance we cannot escape 
the conclusion that the κοινὸς λόγος, which he here 
opposes to a fictitious ἰδία φρόνησις, is itself φρόνησις 
too: so that the κοινὸς λόγος in Heraclitus, or among 
the Stoics, is rational, and thinks. Professor Burnet, 
indeed, pronounces τοῦ λόγον to be corrupt, and 
substitutes tov φρονέειν on the strength of another 
fragment to which I will presently refer: alleging 
that ‘the κοινὸς λόγος of the Stoics accounts for the 
change’”: but no one, I think, has followed him in 
this petetzo prencipie. 

With one exception, which will shortly be men- 
tioned, these are all the fragments in which λόγος has 
an apparently technical sense. The provisional con- 
clusion we have reached is that the Logos, according 
to Heraclitus, is eternal and universal—immanent 
alike in nature and in man—and that it is endowed 
with the attribute of thought. The one remaining 
fragment is that in which Heraclitus pays a compli- 
ment to Bias of Priene. ‘In Priene lived Bias, son 
of Teutamas, οὗ πλέων λόγος ἢ τῶν ἀλλων". This 
does not mean, “who is of more account than the 


2 92. 

* Lc.’ p. 140. [In ed. 2, p. 153 Burnet begins the fragment 
with διὸ δεῖ ἕπεσθαι τῷ Swe from Sex. Adv. Math. vii. 133 and 
attributes τοῦ λόγου δὲ ὄντος Evvod (which he now reads) to the Stoic 
interpreter whom Sextus is following. | 

ve Ge 


86 The Logos wt Llerachtus 


rest,” as Burnet takes it’: still less is Dr Patrick right: 
‘““whose word was worth more than that of others*”: 
nor yet should we translate (with Diels fr. 59) 
“von dem mehr die Rede ist als von den anderen.” 
Heraclitus means simply that Bias had more of the 
Logos—the universal and eternal Logos—in him 
than the other teachers® of the Greeks, Pythagoras, 
for instance, who ἐποίησε ἑωυτοῦ σοφίην, πολυμαθίην, 
κακοτεχνίην ‘made a wisdom of ἀϊ5 own, a heap of 
learning and a heap of mischief.” It is natural 
enough that one who looked upon himself as the 
vehicle of the Logos—“ listen not to me, but to the 
Logos ”—should attribute an exceptional measure of 
the same inspiration to the man who forestalled him 
in the characteristically Heraclitean sentiment: οἱ 
πολλοὶ κακοί", 

Let us now consider some of the other fragments 
which appear to throw light upon the nature of the 
Logos, without, however, mentioning it by name. 
“There is but one wisdom,” says Heraclitus, ‘to 
know the knowledge by which all things are steered 
through all”: & τὸ σοφόν, ἐπίστασθαι γνώμην, ἣ 
κυβερνᾶται πάντα διὰ πάντων, The words ἐν τὸ 
σοφόν, as I understand them, are directed against 
the multiplicity of private and particular ‘‘ wisdoms,” 
put forward by Heraclitus’ predecessors, such as 
Hesiod, Pythagoras, Xenophanes and Hecataeus, 


εἶν ie a ἄν απὸ. 
3 Patin, Heraklit’s Einheitslehre, p. 56, comes near to this 
suggestion, without exactly making it. 


ἘΣ ΤΑ ° Cf. 111, πολλοὶ κακοί, ὀλίγοι δὲ ἀγαθοί, 6 59. 


Fragments illustrating the Logos 87 


whom he vituperates in fragment 16; but it is with 
the second part of the sentence that we are chiefly 
concerned. What is the γνώμη “ by which all things 
are steered through all” ? Remembering that “αὐ 
things come to pass by way of the Logos "—ywopevev 
yap πάντων κατὰ τὸν λόγον TévSe—we can hardly be 
wrong in identifying with the Logos the γνώμη by 
which a// things are steered: from which, of course, 
it follows that the Logos γιγνώσκει “knows.” The 
omniscience of the Logos would also seem to be 
implied in the impressive sentence ‘‘Who can escape 
from that which never sets?” τὸ μὴ δῦνόν ποτε 
πῶς av τις λάθοι"; for it can hardly be doubted 
that Heraclitus is here thinking of the never-dying 
(ἀείζωον) Logos. We have seen moreover, that the 
Logos in Heraclitus is common or universal—{uvés: 
τοῦ λόγου δ᾽ ἐόντος ξυνοῦ, etc. Now in another 
well-known fragment ¢hought is expressly said to 
be common to all things: €vvdv ἐστι πᾶσι τὸ 
φρονέειν. In strict logic, of course, this would 
not establish the identity of the two conceptions: 
but Heraclitus is not a logician, and if we remember 
that ἕξυνόν is one of his favourite catch-words we may 
believe that φρονέειν and λόγος, to each of which he 
assigns the property of ξυνότης, were in point of fact 
inseparably connected in his mind. 

I will now invite you to consider one or two of 
the fragments in which the philosopher speaks of 
the world-forming fire. If fire in Heraclitus is only 
as it were the material embodiment of Logos, we 


eS BR ee 


88 The Logos wn Heracltus 


shall expect to find—supposing we are right so far— 
that he attributes rationality also to this element. 
The fragments which may fairly be held to justify 
us in identifying the Logos with fire are two in 
number. In fragment 20 we read of the ‘“ever- 
living fire,” that ‘‘was and is and shall be always,” 
identical with the world-order or cosmos. Presum- 
ably this is the same as the λόγος which always is: 
Tov δὲ λόγου τοῦδ᾽ ἐόντος αἰεί. The second frag- 
ment speaks of the thunderbolt as steering all things: 
τὰ δὲ πάντα οἰακίζει κεραυνός. The thunderbolt, 
of course, is only an oracular name for fire; and we 
have an exact parallel to this fragment in the sentence 
already quoted: ἕν τὸ σοφόν, ἐπίστασθαι γνώμην 7 
κυβερνᾶται πάντα διὰ πάντων ‘there is but one wis- 
dom, to know the knowledge by which all things are 
steered through all.” Now we have seen that this 
γνώμη is the Logos, so that the fire which steers all 
things is itself the Logos. And the metaphor in 
οἰακίζει clearly presupposes the rationality of that 
which steers the world. The connexion of intelli- 
gence with the warm dry element of fire appears 
moreover in the psychological fragments of Hera- 
clitus. “The dry parched soul is wisest and best”— 
aun ξηρὴ ψυχὴ σοφωτάτη καὶ ἀρίστη": “it is a 
joy to souls to become wet‘’’—with the implication 
of course that it is better to be dry: “when a man 
is drunk, he is led by a beardless boy, stumbling, not 
knowing the way he goes, because his soul is wet*.” 
2. 28. "74, 75: 
mee? sere 


Rationality of the Logos 89 


On these grounds, then, I believe that the frag- 
ments of Heraclitus are in themselves sufficient to 
establish the rationality of the ξυνὸς λόγος about 
which he speaks. By way of confirmation, I will 
remind you of the well-known passage in which 
Sextus Empiricus, or rather Aenesidemus—for it 
is Aenesidemus he is following here—seems to be 
paraphrasing the account of the Logos contained in 
Heraclitus’ own book. ‘It is the opinion of the 
philosopher,” says Sextus, ‘‘that what encompasses 
us is rational” (λογικόν); and possessed of intelli- 
gence (φρενῆρες).... This divine reason (θεῖον λόγον), 
according to Heraclitus, we draw in by means of 
respiration, and so we become actively intelligent 
(νοεροὶ γιγνόμεθα). In sleep we are sunk in forget- 
fulness, but our intelligence returns when we awake. 
For during sleep, when the sensory avenues are 
closed, the mind within us is separated from its 
connexion with the encompassing element, except 
that the union by means of respiration is preserved 
as a sort of root; and the mind when it has thus been 
separated loses the power of memory which it pre- 
viously had. But when we are awake, the mind 
peeps out again through the avenues of sense, as if 
through windows, and, coming into contact with the 

1 Sextus thinks of αὐ, but the element of air does not appear 
to be recognised by Heraclitus. If Heraclitus used τὸ περιέχον 
at all, he can only have meant by it fire, for the atmosphere which 
we breathe, according to Heraclitus, is nothing but fire in one of 
its manifold transmutations. This passage helps to bring vividly 


before our minds the general character of Heraclitus’ conception, 
with its curious intermixture of spirituality and materialism. 


90 The Logos in Herachtus 


encompassing element, puts on the power of reason 
(λογικὴν ἐνδύεται δύναμιν. Accordingly, just as 
embers, when they are placed near the fire, change 
and become red-hot, so in like manner the portion 
of the encompassing element which is quartered in 
our body becomes all but irrational when it is 
separated, while on the other hand it is rendered 
homogeneous with the whole by being connected 
therewith through the majority of avenues’.” It is 
true, no doubt, that the phraseology of this extract, 
and some of the ideas which it contains, are post- 
Heraclitean: in particular, as Professor Burnet has 
pointed out, ‘the distinction between mind and 
body is far too sharply drawn” for Heraclitus. But 
in the words of the same authority, ‘‘ we can hardly 
doubt that the striking simile of the embers which 
glow when they are brought near the fire is genuine’” ; 
and I may add that the pervading idea of the whole 
passage, which is that our intellectual life is nourished 
and sustained by physical communion withthe element 
that surrounds us on every side, is only the material- 
ised form of the doctrine which is the foundation of 
Heraclitean ethics δεῖ ἕπεσθαι τῷ Evva “follow the 
universal,” i.e. the Logos*. And if we admit that 
the simile is Heraclitean, we must equally admit that 
it is meaningless and absurd, unless the surrounding 


* Adv. Math. vi. 127 ff. 

2h: ΒΡ ὐ 6 Ὁ 

* Fr. 2 Diels. I agree with Patin, Gomperz and others in 
attributing these words to Heraclitus. Bywater takes a different 
view: see 2». 92. 


The Logos as divine law QI 


element is rational. The fire we breathe must be 
permanently maintained at a level of actual thought 
which enables it to kindle our smouldering reason 
into a flame. As Heraclitus himself says, €vvov ἐστι 
πᾶσι τὸ φρονέειν “thought is common to all things”: 
ξὺν νόῳ λέγοντας ἰσχυρίζεσθαι χρὴ TO ξυνῷ πάντων, 
ὅκωσπερ νόμῳ πόλις καὶ πολὺ ἰσχυροτέρως : “‘ they 
who speak with the reason should strongly cleave to 
that which is common to all things, as a city cleaves 
to law, and much more strongly”: τρέφονται yap 
πάντες οἱ ἀνθρώπειοι νόμοι ὑπὸ ἑνὸς τοῦ θείου. 
κρατέει γὰρ τοσοῦτον ὁκόσον ἐθέλει καὶ ἐξαρκέει 
πᾶσι καὶ περιγίνεται “for all human laws are nur- 
tured by the one divine law: for it prevails as much 
as it will and suffices for all and has something over’.” 
This divine law is manifestly just the θεῖος λόγος in 
which, according to the testimony of the ancients, 
Heraclitus believed. 

It would accordingly seem that the Logos of 
Heraclitus is a unity, omnipresent, rational, and 
divine, the guiding and controlling cause of every- 
thing that comes to pass whether by the agency of 
man or of nature. “From the visible light,” says 
Clement, “we may perchance hide, but it is impos- 
sible to hide from the intellectual, or in the words of 
Heraclitus : ‘how shall a man hide from that which 
never sets ?’” (τὸ μὴ δῦνόν ποτε πῶς av τις λάθοι;)" 
Against the view which I am now defending it is 
sometimes urged that “the word Adyos did not mean 


i 
91. 
227, Clem. Paedag. 516 C, Migne, 


92 The Logos in Heractitus 


) 


Reason at all in early days.” In my opinion this is 
hardly a correct statement of the point at issue: the 
question is not whether λόγος in Heraclitus is exactly 
synonymous with Reason: it is whether his Logos 
possesses the attribute of Reason, and this can be 
determined only by such a comparative study of the 
fragments as I have attempted above. It is a mere 
petitio priucipit to assert that Logos in early Greek 
has nothing to do with reason if what Heraclitus 
says of Logos cannot be otherwise correctly under- 
stood. Heraclitus may quite well have been the 
first to use the word with such an implication. But 
in point of fact, as Teichmiiller has shown’, the word 
Logos and its congeners—d.atéyeo Gan, for instance, 
in Homer’s ἀλλὰ tin μοι ταῦτα φίλος διελέξατο 
θυμός ;—even before the time of Heraclitus, fre- 
quently imply reflection or thought; and soon after 
Heraclitus we meet with λόγος in Parmenides with 
the meaning of reason or ratiocination, as opposed 
to sense-perception: κρῖναι δὲ λόγῳ πολύδηριν 
ἔλεγχον ἐξ ἐμέθεν ῥηθέντα". To Heraclitus, however, 
I do not think that λόγος meant simply reason. I 
think he conceives of it rather as the rational prin- 
ciple, power, or being which speaks to man both 
from without and from within—the universal Word, 
which tor those who have ears to hear is audible 


1 Burnet, Zc.’ p. 133 n.% [In ed. 2, p. 146 n.® this statement 
is modified as follows: “‘ The Stoic interpretation given by Marc. 
Aur. iv. 46 (2. P. 32 b) must be rejected altogether. The word 
λόγος was never used like that till post-Aristotelian times.” ] 

2 Neue Studien, τ. 167 ff. ὃ Parm. 1. 36 f. Diels. 


Fragments of Epiuharmus 93 


both in Nature and in their own hearts. Such an 
interpretation seems to suit all the fragments in 
which he speaks of the Logos, more especially the 
first, ‘having hearkened not unto me, but to the 
Logos, it is wise to confess that all things are one.” 
In his somewhat hurried review of the different 
connotations of Adyos in Greek literature, Teich- 
miiller says nothing about Epicharmus; and as the 
fragments which bear the name of this philosopher- 
poet furnish some confirmation of the view which 1 
have ventured to put before you, it may be worth 
while to examine what they have to say upon the 
subject. 

The principal fragments ascribed to Epicharmus, 
you may remember, belong to one or other of three 
classes. First come the dramatic remains, the 
authenticity of which is now acknowledged, I believe, 
by all. Secondly, we have about fifteen fragments 
of the Carmen Phystcum. Whether these are 
genuine or not is a question still debated. Rohde 
and Diels attribute them to Epicharmus, while 
von Wilamowitz-Mdéllendorff and Kaibel consider 
them spurious, the latter however maintaining on 
sufficient grounds that they date from the fifth 
century before Christ, and were known to Euripides’. 
The third set of fragments are supposed by Kaibel 
to be taken from the Podlzteza of Chrysogonus, the 
flute-player, who wrote in the end of the fifth century 
p.c. Aristoxenus, as we learn from Athenaeus, 
assigned some of the ψευδεπιχάρμεια to this source, 


1 See Kaibel, Comicorum Graccorum fragmenta, τ. p. 133 ff. 


94 The Logos in Heraclitus 


Now in the first and third of these three collec- 
tions we have several traces of Heracliteanism. Let 
us take the admittedly genuine fragments first. In 
fragment 170 (Kaibel) the poet takes the Heraclitean 
doctrine of universal flux, and applies it for the first 
time in Greek literature to the question of the per- 
manence of human personality. If you increase or 
diminish a number, it is no longer the same as 
before. Similarly with human beings: 

ὧδε νῦν ὅρη; 

καὶ τὸς ἀνθρώπους" ὃ μὲν γὰρ αὔξεθ᾽, 6 δέ γα μὰν φθίνει, 

ἐν μεταλλαγᾷ δὲ πάντες ἐντὶ πάντα τὸν χρόνον: 
from which the inference is drawn that you and 1 are 
different persons to-day from what we were yesterday, 
and from what we shall be again to-morrow. This 
interesting fragment has been admirably discussed 
by Bernays’, who shews that it originated the problem 
known among the Stoics as the αὐξανόμενος λόγος: 
but it does not bear directly on our subject, and 
I mention it here only to illustrate the way in which 
Epicharmus gives a particular application to one of 
the fundamental principles of Heraclitus. The same 
tendency to work out Heracliteanism in detail reveals 
itself in fragment 172, which deals with the univer- 
sality of thought and is little more than an elaboration 
of the saying of Heraclitus ξυνόν ἐστι πᾶσι τὸ 
φρονέειν. The first two lines are as follows: 

Evpace, τὸ σοφόν ἐστιν ov καθ᾽ ἕν μόνον, 
ἀλλ᾽ ὅσσαπερ ζῇ, πάντα καὶ γνώμαν ἔχει. 
| Epicharmus und der Αὐξανόμενος λόγος. Ges. Abh. τ. 109- 
117. 


Fragments of the Carmen Physicum 95 


Everything that has life, has also γνώμα. In 
Heraclitus however it would seem that the Logos 
is not confined to living objects, any more than in 
Stoicism. The rest of the fragment of pseudo- 
Epicharmus seems to mean that although eggs have 
no γνώμα when they are laid, yet the hen by sitting 
on them makes them live, and then they have γνώμα. 
The two last verses are: 

τὸ δὲ σοφὸν & φύσις τόδ᾽ οἷδεν ws ἔχει 

μόνα" πεπαίδευται γὰρ αὐταύτας" ὕπο: 
2.6. (I think) Nature alone knows the secret of this 
wisdom (how this wisdom is), for she is her own 
teacher: not (as Cobet) e¢ huzus norunt principem 
saprentiae naturam solani, quae magistra ipsis fuit. 
We may compare the saying of Heraclitus φύσις 
κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ. But to return. The fragments 
of the Carmen Physicum contain nothing that is 
suggestive of Heraclitus, except an allusion to the 
circulation of the elements*. In the third collection, 
however, we have what is, I think, the most explicit 
statement of the Logos-doctrine to be found between 
the time of Heraclitus and that of the Stoics. 
} ἔστιν ἀνθρώπῳ λογισμός, ἔστι Kat θεῖος λόγος᾽ 


ὃ δέ γε τἀνθρώπου πέφυκεν ἀπό γε τοῦ θείου λόγου". 


’ So Porson for αὖ ταύτας. 

> Since writing the above, I observe that Diels interprets the 
fragment in the same way (Frag. d. Vorsokratiker’, τ. p.91). With 
the general sentiment cf. Empedocles, /v. 110, 10 Diels, πάντα 
γὰρ ἴσθι φρόνησιν ἔχειν καὶ νώματος αἶσαν. 

* See fr. 239, 240 Kaibel. 

* Diels, Zc. p. 98 (/7. 57. 2; 3): 


96 The Logos wn Heraclitus 


The derivation of the human soz/ from the gods had 
already been affirmed by Pindar and others; in 
Euripides and Plato we meet with the doctrine that 
the human νοῦς is in its origin and nature divine ; but 
so far as I am aware, this is the only passage in Greek 
literature, until we come to the Stoics, which ap- 
pears to be definitely and immediately inspired by the 
Heraclitean doctrine of Logos. It seems to me 
clear that the author of these lines written, as I have 
said, in the end of the fifth century before Christ, 
not only had Heraclitus in his mind, but interpreted 
the Logos as I have done. 

Up to this point we have considered the Logos 
merely as immanent—immanent in nature and in man. 
But the Stoics regarded it in yet another aspect: it 
was also the concors dtscordia rerum—the harmony 
in which all mutually antagonistic tendencies or forces, 
both in the moral and in the physical world, are recon- 
ciled. [need onlyremind you of the lines of Cleanthes: 


ἀλλὰ σὺ Kal τὰ περισσά <T > ἐπίστασαι ἄρτια θεῖναι, 
καὶ κοσμεῖν τάἄάκοσμα καὶ οὐ φίλα σοὶ φίλα ἐστίν. 
ὧδε γὰρ εἰς ἕν πάντα συνήρμοκας ἐσθλὰ κακοῖσιν. 
ὥσθ᾽ ἕνα γίγνεσθαι πάντων λόγον αἰὲν ἐόντα. 

‘““Nay, but thou knowest to make crooked straight : 
Chaos to thee is order; in thine eyes 
The unloved is lovely, who didst harmonise 
Things evil with things good, that there should be 


2) 


One Word through all things everlastingly”. 


172k: 


> For other illustrations of this characteristically Stoic doctrine 
see the passages in von Arnim Stotcorum fragmenta veterum 11. 
SS 1168 ff. 


Flarmony of opposites 97 


There can be no doubt that the general concep- 
tion of a supreme and ultimate unity or harmony of 
opposites goes back to Heraclitus. As Professor 
Burnet has remarked, “opposites,” in Heraclitus, 
‘are but the two faces of the fire which is the thought 
that rules the world’.” ‘‘Opposition,” Heraclitus says, 
“is co-operation—ro ἀντίξουν cupdépe—and the 
fairest harmony results from differences*”: ‘were 
there no higher and lower notes in music, there 
could be no harmony at all*®.” ‘As with the bow 
and the lyre, so with the world; it is the tension of 
opposing forces that makes the structure one”: 
παλίντονος ἁρμονίηῆ κόσμου ὅκωσπερ τόξου Kal 
λύρας. The sum of the whole matter is contained 
in the fragment: “Join together that which is whole 
and that which is not whole, that which agrees and 
that which disagrees, the concordant and the dis- 
cordant: frou all comes one and from one comes all”: 
ἐκ πάντων ἕν καὶ ἐξ ἑνὸς πάντας But the particular 
question which concerns the student of the Logos 
doctrine is whether Heraclitus, like the Stoics, con- 
sidered this ultimate unity to be the Logos. I think 
' there is every reason to suppose he did. For in the 
first place he complains, as we have seen, that the 
multitude are ignorant of the Logos: “they are at 
variance with that with which they live in most 
continual intercourse”: “they seem as if they had 
no experience of the Logos both before they hear it 


and when they have heard it for the first time”: 


» 


‘fe p. 1441. > 46. ἘΜ. 
* BO. tO 
A. E. 7 


98 The Logos in Herachtus 


“although the Logos is universal, they live as if they 
had a private intelligence of their own.” And in 
like manner he complains that the multitude do not 
understand that “hidden harmony” which is “better 
than the visible’”: ‘they do not understand,” he 
says, “how that which is discordant is concordant 
with itself*.” It is a fair inference that this hidden 
harmony zs the Logos. In the second place, it is 
the Logos of which Heraclitus at the very outset of 
his book proclaims himself to be the prophet. 
‘Listen not to me but to the Logos.” And the 
doctrine in which his preaching actually culminates 
—the last word of Heraclitus, so to speak—is not 
the universal flux or warfare, but the underlying 
harmony of all the opposing forces that make up 
the universal life. This was well understood in 
antiquity, and is now generally recognised by modern 
writers on Heraclitus, among others by Professor 
Burnet. Ina passage of Philo, to which Patin*® was 
the first to assign its due importance in the history 
of Heraclitean criticism, we read as follows: ‘‘ That 
which is made up of both the opposites is one, and 
when this one is dissected, the opposites are brought 
to light. Is not this what the Greeks say their 
great and celebrated Heraclitus put in the forefront 
of his philosophy as its sum and substance, and 
boasted of as a new discovery ?” 

We are consequently bound to suppose that in 
the Logos whose prophet Heraclitus declared him- 


Muay. * 45. 
> Zc. p. 60. Philo, Quzs rer. div. haer. 43. 


Logos as reconciler of opposites 99 


self to be, all opposites are reconciled. The Logos 
reveals itself through him, and what it reveals, that 
is, the Logos itself, is unity. ‘“‘ Having listened not 
to me, but to the Logos, it is wise to confess that all 
things are one.” Thirdly, we may arrive, I think, 
at the same conclusion by yet another way. It is 
tolerably clear that λόγος in Heraclitus is to be 
identified with @eds. Various indications point in 
this direction. The epithet “divine” is applied by 
him to the εἷς νόμος which we have already interpreted 
as the Logos, the νόμος which “ prevails as much as 
it will and suffices for all and has something over’.” 
We are told by Clement of Alexandria that “ Hera- 
clitus the Ephesian believed fire to be God’,” and 
the identification is generally admitted, although 
M. Bovet sees nothing in it beyond a metaphor’. 
Metaphor or no metaphor, it does not matter much: 
for in Heraclitus metaphor is truth: no one can read 
his fragments without realising this fact. And if fire 
in Heraclitus is God, the Logos must be God ; for 
we have seen that the λόγος on its material side is 
fire. There is also at least one fragment of the 
philosopher himself which appears to deify the 
Logos. ‘There is but one Wisdom: it wills not 
and yet wills to be called by the name of Zeus*.” 
The “one Wisdom” is manifestly the Logos, or 
“thought by which all things are steered through 
all®”: it is willing to be called Zeus, because it is 


* gi. 2 Coh. ad Gent. p. 165 A, Migne. 
> Le Dieu de Platon, p. 102. * G5: Te 


γ.--.- 


100 The Logos in Flerachtus 


the true objective reality which men _ ignorantly 
worship under that name’: on the other hand, it re- 
jects the appellation for the reasons which prompted 
Heraclitus to declare that Homer and Archilochus 
should be scourged and cast out of the arena. The 
Logos has none of the anthropomorphic or other 
degrading attributes and passions belonging to the 
Homeric Zeus. And if Logos in Heraclitus is 
equivalent to θεός, the Logos must certainly be that 
ultimate reality in which all opposites are reconciled : 
for Heraclitus expressly says that ‘God is day and 
night, winter and summer, war and peace, satiety 
and hunger”: ὁ θεὸς ἡμέρη εὐφρόνη, χειμὼν θέρος, 
πόλεμος εἰρήνη, κόρος λιμός"; and in another fragment 
we have the idea that to God all things are beautiful 
and good and right, but men think some things 
wrong and others right®, In short, when Cudworth 
speaks of God as “reconciling all the variety and 
contrariety of things in the universe into one most 
lovely and admirable harmony‘*,” he exactly expresses 
one of the principal ideas which 1 think Heraclitus 
connected with his doctrine of the Logos. 

If the view which I have put before you is 
correct, we must suppose that Heraclitus was first 
and foremost a prophet and a theologian rather than 
a man of science; and it is as a theologian that he is 
regarded by many scholars, notably by Tannery in 


+ Ci. Zeller, Fal. der σ᾿" ἃ 2; p. 670, A. 2. 
+ 20; * G5 
* Intellectual System of the Universe, p. 207. 


Divinity of the Logos 101 


his Sccence Hellene. The hierophantic and oracular 
nature of Heraclitus’ style points to the same con- 
clusion; he himself says that ‘the lord, whose oracle 
is at Delphi, neither utters plainly nor yet conceals 
his meaning, but speaks by signs” (ἀλλὰ σημαίνει)", 
and he seems to have deliberately modelled his style 
upon Apollo’s. I may add also that the fragment 
ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν", which is sometimes understood 
as equivalent merely to αὐτοδίδακτος εἰμί, “I am 
self-taught,” “I enquired of myself,” ought, I think, 
when interpreted by the light of the fragments 
already discussed, to be understood in the deeper 
and more mystical sense “1 investigated myself,” 
ze. it was by self-study, by looking within and 
not without that I discovered the secret of the 
Universe: for the €vvds λόγος is present in us as 
well as without. 
“The beauty thou dost worship dwells in thee: 
Within thy soul divine it harboureth: 


This also bids my spirit soar, and saith 
Words that unsphere for me Heaven’s harmony’.” 


This is of course a favourite idea in every age with 
thinkers of the school to which Heraclitus seems to 
have belonged. “Ju ¢e wpsum vedi: im interiore 
homine habitat veritas,’ as Augustine says. 

I have endeavoured to shew that the Heraclitean 
Logos is at once the Divine Reason immanent both 
in Nature and in man, and also the unity in which all 


Pours > 80. 
> Campanella, Sonners, tr. Symonds. 


102 The Logos in Heraclitus 


opposites are reconciled. The first of these two 
conceptions—I mean the doctrine of the divine 
immanence—appears again and again in Greek 
philosophy between the time of Heraclitus and the 
rise of Stoicism; but the second—the notion of a 
world-unity or harmony of differences—is com- 
paratively rare, I think, in Greek literature until 
Cleanthes. Some have thought that this is the 
leading idea in the drama of Sophocles. ‘“ Un- 
deserved suffering,’ says Professor Butcher, “ while 
it is exhibited in Sophocles under various lights, 
always appears as part of the permitted evil which is 
a condition of a just and harmoniously ordered 
universe’.” Nestle has endeavoured to show, not, 
I think, successfully, that Euripides held the same 
belief, and borrowed it from Heraclitus. According 
to Euripides, he says, “τῆς whole world, material as 
well as moral, depends on the reciprocal play of 
opposites, which however have no absolute value. 
And thus the entire Cosmos reveals itself as a work 
of unalterable law, which Heraclitus, and after him 
Euripides, call Dike, so that in the view of both this 
Dike is not simply a moral but a cosmic force®.” 
There are traces of the belief in Plato, particularly in 
the Laws, 903 B ff. τῷ τοῦ παντὸς ἐπιμελουμένῳ πρὸς τὴν 
σωτηρίαν καὶ ἀρετὴν τοῦ ὅλου πάντ᾽ ἐστὶ συντεταγμένα 
...Kal τὸ σὸν μόριον εἰς τὸ πᾶν ξυντείνει βλέπον ἀεί, 
καίπερ πάνσμικρον ὄν...μέρος μὴν ἕνεκα ὅλου καὶ οὐχ 
* Some Aspects of the Gr. Genius, p. 127. 
* Euripides, p. 151. 


Flerachtus founder of Logos doctrine 103 


ΜῚ 


ὅλον μέρους ἕνεκα ἀπεργάζεται. In Stoicism the two 
essential characteristics of the Logos are that it is 
omnipresent and that it reconciles the seeming 
contrariety of things into a perfect harmony; and 
since each of these characteristics belongs to the 
Heraclitean λόγος, we are justified in holding that 
Heraclitus, and not the Stoics, was the founder of 
the doctrine, which has played so great a part in 
later religious and philosophical thought. 


IV. KAEAN@OYZ YMNOZ 


4 9 3 4 ’ὔ Ν » ed 
Κύδιστ᾽ ἀθανάτων, πολνώνυμε, παγκρατὲς αἰεί, 
Ζεῦ, φύσεως ἀρχηγέ, νόμου μέτα πάντα κυβερνῶν, 
χαῖρε: σὲ γὰρ πάντεσσι θέμις θνητοῖσι προσαυδᾶν. 
ἐκ σοῦ γὰρ γενόμεσθα, θεοῦ μίμημα λαχόντες 
μοῦνοι, ὅσα ζώει τε καὶ ἕρπει θνήτ᾽ ἐπὶ γαῖαν. 5 
τῷ σε καθυμνήσω καὶ σὸν κράτος αἰὲν ἀείσω. 
σοὶ δὴ πᾶς ὅδε κόσμος, ἑλισσόμενος περὶ γαῖαν, 
πείθεται, ἣ κεν ἄγῃς, καὶ ἑκὼν ὑπὸ σεῖο κρατεῖται: 
τοῖον ἔχεις ὑποεργὸν ἀνικήτοις ἐνὶ χερσὶν 

> 

ἀμφήκη, πυρόεντ᾽, αἰειζώοντα κεραυνόν' 10 

A Ἢ \ A A 
Tov yap ὑπὸ πληγῃς φύσεως πάντ᾽ ἔργα <TehEtTaL>. 
= Ἀ , \ 4, ἃ Ν ’ 
ᾧ σὺ κατευθύνεις κοινὸν λόγον, ὃς διὰ πάντων 
φοιτᾷ, μιγνύμενος μεγάλοις μικροῖς τε φάεσσιν. 
ὡς τόσσος γεγαὼς ὕπατος βασιλεὺς διὰ παντός' 

5 ’, 4 » > ios, \ ~ 4 ~ = 
οὐδέ τι γίγνεται ἔργον ἐπὶ χθονὶ σοῦ δίχα, δαῖμον, 15 
Ξ 3 > , ~ ’ ἣν, 2 δ. ἜΝ ’ 
οὔτε κατ᾽ αἰθέριον θεῖον πόλον οὔτ᾽ ἐνὶ πόντῳ, 

\ ε 4, es Ν , > ’, 
πλὴν ὁπόσα ῥέζουσι κακοὶ σφετέρῃσιν ἀνοίαις. 


4. γενόμεσθα, θεοῦ for the corrupt γένος ἐσμέν, ἤχου. Cf. 
Musonius, p. 90 Hense ἄνθρωπος μίμημα μὲν θεοῦ μόνον τῶν ἐπι- 
γείων ἐστίν. The conjecture γενόμεσθα is due to Meineke. 

11. τελεῖται. Supplied by von Arnim. 

14. ws τόσσος yeyaws. Von Arnim reads ᾧ σὺ τόσος ye- 
γαὼς κτλι: others suppose a lacuna after φάεσσι, but the error 
seems incurable. 


THE HYMN OF CLEANTHES 


O God most glorious, called by many a name, 

Nature’s great King, through endless years the 
same ; 

Omnipotence, who by thy just decree 

Controllest all, hail, Zeus, for unto thee 

Behoves thy creatures in all lands to call. 5 

We are thy children, we alone, of all 

On earth’s broad ways that wander to and fro, 

Bearing thine image wheresoe'er we go. 

Wherefore with songs of praise thy power I will 


forth shew. 
Lo! yonder Heaven, that round the earth is 
wheeled, το 


Follows thy guidance, still to thee doth yield 
Glad homage; thine unconquerable hand 

Such flaming minister, the levin-brand, 

Wieldeth, a sword two-edged, whose deathless might 
Pulsates through all that Nature brings to light; 15 
Vehicle of the universal Word, that flows 
Through all, and in the light celestial glows 

Of stars both great and small. O King of Kings 
Through ceaseless ages, God, whose purpose brings 
To birth, whate’er on land or in the sea 20 
Is wrought, or in high heaven’s immensity ; 

Save what the sinner works infatuate. 


106 The Hymn of Cleanthes 


39 Ἁ Ἁ XN ἣν ’ 3 9 , » “Ὁ 
ἀλλὰ σὺ καὶ τὰ περισσά « τ᾽ ὶ ἐπίστασαι ἄρτια θεῖναι, 
Ν La ¥ Ν 5 4 \ 4 3 ’ 
καὶ κοσμεῖν τάκοσμα, καὶ οὐ φίλα σοὶ φίλα ἐστίν. 
ὧδε γὰρ εἰς ἕν πάντα συνήρμοκας ἐσθλὰ κακοῖσιν, 20 

ν 9 ν ’ὔ 4 / 3A 37 
ὥσθ᾽ eva γίγνεσθαι πάντων λόγον αἰὲν ἐόντα. 
ὃν φεύγοντες ἐῶσιν ὅσοι θνητῶν κακοί εἰσι, 
δύσμοροι, οἵτ᾽ ἀγαθῶν μὲν ἀεὶ κτῆσιν ποθέοντες 
οὔτ᾽ ἐσορῶσι θεοῦ κοινὸν νόμον οὔτε κλύουσιν, 
e , Q A , 9 Ν με nd 
ᾧ κεν πειθόμενοι σὺν νῷ βίον ἐσθλὸν ἔχοιεν. 28 
9 Ν > 4.259 ε A 3, Ἀ ¥ Ce aes 2 
αὐτοὶ δ᾽ αὖθ ορμωώσιν avo. κακὸν ἄλλος ἐπ ἀλλο, 
εἐ Ν ε \ 4 Ν , ¥ 
οἱ μὲν ὑπὲρ δόξης σπουδὲν δυσέριστον ἔχοντες, 
ot δ᾽ ἐπὶ κερδοσύνας τετραμμένοι οὐδενὶ κόσμῳ, 
» 3 9 » Ν ’ ε ’ὔ » 
ἄλλοι δ᾽ εἰς ἄνεσιν καὶ σώματος ἡδέα ἔργα. 
τον τον « « « γέπσ᾽ “ἄλλοτε, δ᾽ ἀλλα φέρονται Ὁ 
4 4, 4 ΕῚ 4 A ΄ 
σπεύδοντες μάλα πάμπαν ἐναντία τῶνδε γενέσθαι. 
3 ἈΝ ω ’ , 9 ’ 
ἀλλὰ Ζεῦ πάνδωρε, κελαινεφές, ἀργικέραυνε, 
ἀνθρώπους « μὲν» ῥύου ἀπειροσύνης ἀπὸ λυγρῆς, 
κι ¥ Ν a 
nv ov, πάτερ, σκέδασον ψυχῆς ἄπο, δὸς δὲ κυρῆσαι 
γνώμης, ἡ πίσυνος σὺ δίκης μέτα πάντα κυβερνᾷς, 35 
» > x , 3 ΄ , a 
Opp ἂν τιμηθέντες ἀμειβώμεσθά σε τιμῇ, 
ὑμνοῦντες τὰ σὰ ἔργα διηνεκές, ὡς ἐπέοικε 
X 3 3 3 Ν » “a 4 ¥ A 
θνητὸν ἐόντ᾽, ἐπεὶ οὔτε βροτοῖς γέρας ἄλλο τι μεῖζον 
+ ἰοὺ Ba X SN ’ 9 , e a) 
οὔτε θεοῖς, ἢ κοινὸν ἀεὶ νόμον ἐν δίκῃ ὑμνεῖν. 


30. Von Arnim conjectures that the missing words may > 
have been ἀλλὰ κακοῖς ἐπέκυρσαν, or the like. φέρονται (for 
φέροντες Of the MS) is due to Meineke. 


The Flymn of Cleanthes 107 


Nay, but thou knowest to make crooked straight: 
Chaos to thee is order: in thine eyes 

The unloved is lovely, who didst harmonize 25 
Things evil with things good, that there should be 
One Word through all things everlastingly. 

One Word—whose voice alas! the wicked spurn; 
Insatiate for the good their spirits yearn: 

Yet seeing see not, neither hearing hear 30 
God’s universal law, which those revere, 

By reason guided, happiness who win. 

The rest, unreasoning, diverse shapes of sin 
Self-prompted follow: for an idle name 

Vainly they wrestle in the lists of fame: 35 
Others inordinately riches woo, 

Or dissolute, the joys of flesh pursue. 

Now here, now there they wander, fruitless still, 
For ever seeking good and finding ill. 

Zeus the all-bountiful, whom darkness shrouds, 40 
Whose lightning lightens in the thunder-clouds ; 
Thy children save from error’s deadly sway : 
Turn thou the darkness from their souls away: 
Vouchsafe that unto knowledge they attain ; 

For thou by knowledge art made strong to reign 45 
O’er all, and all things rulest righteously. 

So by thee honoured, we will honour thee, 
Praising thy works continually with songs, 

As mortals should; nor higher meed belongs 
E’en to the gods, than justly to adore 50 
The universal law for evermore. 


ae VAN OF CLEAN TOMES 


Athenagoras, Leg. pro Christianis, 7. 904 B, Migne ποιηταὶ μὲν 

’ ᾽ ᾽ τσ 
ἈΝ Ν ’ . , tal , Ν ἈΝ 
γὰρ καὶ φιλόσοφοι---ἐπέβαλον στοχαστικῶς, κινηθέντες μὲν κατὰ 
συμπάθειαν τῆς παρὰ τοῦ θεοῦ πνοῆς ὑπὸ τῆς αὐτὸς αὑτοῦ ψυχῆς 
ἕκαστος ζητῆσαι εἰ δυνατὸς εὑρεῖν τε καὶ νοῆσαι τὴν ἀλήθειαν. 

Clement, Strom. 1. 7. 732 Ὁ, Migne φωτὸς δ᾽, οἶμαι, ἀνατολῇ 
πάντα φυωτίζεται. 


My object in these lectures is to expound and 
illustrate the religious significance of Stoicism, in 
connexion more especially with the hymn of 
Cleanthes. But before we can profitably enter on 
the subject before us, it is necessary to say a word 
or two about the development of religious thought 
in Greece before Stoicism began. Leaving out of 
account everything of merely secondary importance, 
we can distinguish in Greek literature—and it is 
with literature alone that we are now concerned— 
two main lines of religious development, the one 
represented by the poets from Homer to Sophocles, 
and the other by the philosophers from Thales down 
to the Stoics. The poets for the most part accepted 
the leading features of the old Homeric theodicy, 
with its polytheism and anthropomorphism; but a 
tolerably continuous progress can be traced in the 
growing emphasis which was laid upon the higher 


Religious thought in poets 109 


and more idealistic elements in Homer's theology, 
to the suppression or comparative neglect of the 
grosser anthropomorphic features, and more par- 
ticularly in the gradual spiritualisation of Zeus. The 
father of Gods and men in Aeschylus and Sophocles 
is a Being infinitely more capable of inspiring 
religious devotion and faith than the Homeric Zeus, 
who combines in a single personality the two opposing 
principles of Naturalism and Idealism, and is always 
violating the law of righteousness, to which he never- 
theless requires, on pain of severest penalties, his 
human subjects to conform. It would be impossible, 
for instance, to find a true Homeric parallel to the 
beautiful hymn to Zeus that occurs in the Suppleant 
Maidens of Aeschylus—I quote it according to 
Mr Morshead’s admirable rendering— 


‘Though the deep will of Zeus be hard to track 
Yet doth it flame and glance 
A beacon in the dark, ’mid clouds of chance 
That wrap mankind. 
Yea, though the counsel fall, undone it shall not lie, 
Whate’er be shaped and fixed within Zeus’ ruling mind. 
Dark as a solemn grove, with sombre leafage shaded, 
His paths of purpose wind, 
A marvel to man’s eye. 
Smitten by him from towering hopes degraded 
Mortals lie low and still: 
Tireless and effortless works forth its will 
The arm divine! 
God from his holy seat, in calm of unarmed power, 
Brings forth the deed at the appointed hour*!” 


1 38 ff. 


[10 The Flymn of Cleanthes 


And there is little or nothing in Homer to corre- 
spond to the sentiment of entire dependence on the 
justice of the Supreme God to which the Chorus in 
Sophocles’ £/ectra give expression when they thus 
console the maiden : 

θάρσει μοι, θάρσει τέκνον" ἔτι μέγας οὐρανῷ 

Ζεύς, ὃς ἐφορᾷ πάντα καὶ κρατύνει. 

“Courage, my child, courage: great Zeus still reigns in 

heaven, who oversees and governs all}.” 


At the same time, even in Sophocles, with 
whom the purely poetical development of Greek 
religious thought reaches its highest point, the 
inherent dualism of the Homeric theology has by 
no means disappeared altogether. Like most of 
his countrymen, Sophocles is still content to speak 
of the omnipotent Gods as the authors of evil not 
less than of good: he does not ascribe to them 
moral purity, any more than Homer: we find 
passages in his plays which seem to endorse such 
traditional doctrines as the envy of the Gods and 
the infatuation or Ate by which they drive men 
into sin; and above all, there is hardly a suggestion 
in Sophocles of the view that did more, perhaps, 
than anything else to purify the theology of Greece 
—the view that the divine nature must be such 
as to furnish a moral standard or ideal to humanity, 
so that the supreme rule of conduct for man _ be- 
comes ὁμοίωσις τῷ θεῷ ‘assimilation to God.” One 
such trace is to be found in the Oeadzpus at Colonus 


gpa t 


Religious thought in philosophers III 


1267 ff., where Polynices makes this touching appeal 
to his father : 
“ GAN ἔστι yap καὶ Ζηνὶ σύνθακος θρόνων 
Αἰδὼς ἐπ᾽ ἔργοις πᾶσι, καὶ πρὸς σοί, πάτερ, 
παρασταθήτω. 
“ But forasmuch as Zeus himself hath mercy for the partner 


of his throne, shall she not also find a place by thee, my 
father ?” 


This is the motive which makes nature-religions into 
ethical religions. 

If we turn on the other hand from the poets to 
the philosophers, we find ourselves at once in a 
totally different atmosphere. At a very early period, 
Greek philosophy raised the standard of revolt 
against the authority of Homer in matters apper- 
taining to religion and theology. The attempt of 
the early Ionic philosophers to discover a single 
creative cause of the Universe, itself uncreated and 
imperishable, was, however unconsciously—and | 
am not sure that they were all of them wholly un- 
conscious of the goal to which they were travelling 
—was a step, I say, in the direction of monotheism ; 
and when Xenophanes of Colophon in the sixth 
century before Christ explicitly affirmed the existence 
of “one God, supreme in heaven and earth, neither 
in body nor in mind resembling man” it became 
clear that philosophy would not be satisfied with 
merely purifying the old Homeric faith: nothing 
short of a revolution would suffice. The Homeric 
religion must be discarded altogether, and replaced 


112 The Hymn of Cleanthes 


by something better fitted to satisfy the highest 
moral and religious aspirations of man, and at the 
same time to furnish, if possible, an explanation of 
nature in which the human intellect could rest. 

It has been pointed out by Plato that this feud 
between philosophy and poetry—a feud which arose 
mainly from the odzum theologicum—was one of the 
salient features in the history of Greek literature 
down to the early part of the fourth century before 
Christ. If we look at it from a somewhat wider 
point of view, we may say, 1 think, that it is one of 
the most significant and pregnant phenomena in the 
history not only of literature, but of religion, and not 
of Greek religion merely, but of the religious develop- 
ment of the human race. On the one hand, as a 
German writer has said, we have poetry, “ immor- 
talising in imperishable creations the traditional faith, 
and on the other hand, we find philosophy, just on 
account of that faith, condemning those creations, 
and at the same time, I think we may add, furnishing 
materials for a new and deeper conception of the 
Godhead and his relation both to man and nature. 
Positively, as well as negatively, therefore, Greek 
philosophy—the philosophies of Xenophanes, of 
Heraclitus, above all of Plato and the Stoics—to a 
certain extent points the way to Christianity and 
Christian thought, whether we express the connexion 
by the favourite Clementine formula of a divinely- 
appointed education of mankind, in the scheme of 
which philosophy is as it were the propaedeutic 


Career of Cleanthes 113 


or preparation—apomaideta or mpotapacKevy'—or 
whether we say that there is a real continuity, 
historical perhaps as well as philosophical, between 
the theoretical ideals of Greek thinkers and their 
more or less imperfect—for as yet they are only 
imperfectly realised—I say their more or less im- 
perfect realisation in Christianity ἡ, 

It is from this point of view, then, as expressive 
of a kind of movement in the direction of Christian 
and post-Christian ways of thought and feeling— 
philosophical thought and religious feeling—that 1 
would ask you to consider the hymn of Cleanthes. 
Of the life and character of its author we know 
enough to make us anxious to know more. He was 
born probably in 331 B.c., in the town of Assos in 
Asia Minor, eight years before the death of Alex- 
ander the Great. Nothing is known to us of the 
circumstances under which he came to Athens and 
began the study of philosophy under Zeno; but his 
zeal for knowledge is attested by the well-authenti- 


1 Cf. Clement, Strom. 1. 2. 709 B, Migne, Philosophy ἀληθείας 
- εἰκόνα ἐναργῆ, θείαν δωρεὰν Ἕλλησι δεδομένην ; 2014. 5. 717 Ὁ 
ἐπαιδαγώγει γὰρ καὶ αὐτὴ τὸ Ἑλληνικόν, ὡς 6 νόμος τοὺς Ἑ βραίους, 
εἰς Χριστόν εἰ α΄. Elsewhere he speaks of philosophy as a lamp, 
Christ as the sun, and so forth. Cf. also vi. 392 C Ἰουδαίοις 
μὲν νόμος, Ἕλλησι δὲ φιλοσοφία μέχρι τῆς παρουσίας. 

2 There may be a historical connexion, on the one hand 
through Stoicism, which flourished at Tarsus, and on the other 
through Jewish Hellenism. Much remains to be done in this 
field of enquiry. At present there are mainly dogmatic asser- 
tions, on the one side and on the other, with regard to the 
existence or non-existence of such a connexion. 


A. Βα ὃ 


114 The Hymn of Cleanthes 


cated story that he used to earn “his living by 
drawing water at night, in order to devote the day- 
time to study’.” In course of time he succeeded 
Zeno in the presidency of the Stoic school or 
college; for by this time Athens had become—what 
she continued to be until Justinian closed the philo- 
sophical schools in the sixth century a.p.—a kind of 
University town; and the different schools, Academic, 
Peripatetic, Stoic and Epicurean, were in reality so 
many independent colleges, each with a tradition, 
organisation and discipline of its own*. He continued 
head of the school for thirty-two years, from 264 till 
his death in 232 B.c. Of his work as a teacher a 
single anecdote is preserved illustrating the slow and 
painstaking character of his disputations. [{ is said 
that the more versatile and perhaps more superficial 
Chrysippus, on whom the presidency of the college 
afterwards devolved’, became tired of listening to 
the long and tedious arguments of his master, and 
impatiently exclaimed on one occasion: ‘‘Give me 
your conclusions, and 1 will find the proofs” But, 
in spite of this anecdote, Cleanthes was assuredly 
none of your ‘“‘dry-as-dust,” mechanical pedants. In 


1 Pearson, Fragments of Zeno and Cleanthes, p. 35. 

2 See von Wilamowitz-Mollendorff, A272. Untersuch. tv, Ante- 
gonos von Karystos, 263 ff. The Academy and Lyceum were origin- 
ally half-religious foundations, organised like religious associations 
or θίασοι. See also supra, p. 31, for the history of the word “ arts.” 

° Diog. Laert. vil. 183, reports that it was commonly said of 
him εἰ μὴ yap ἦν Χρύσιππος, οὐκ av ἦν Στοα. 

“ Perhaps this is a little characteristic of moral philosophers 
at all times; proofs are excogitated to establish theories. 


Flerachtus and Cleanthes 115 


none of the earlier Stoics is there so rich a vein of 
religious as well as philosophical inspiration—a kind 
of suppressed enthusiasm for whatever is adorable 
and great in nature and in man, breaking out from 
time to time in strongly emotional, sometimes half- 
oracular utterances such as recall to us the fragments 
of the great teacher to whom, as it seems to me, 
Cleanthes owed more than to all other writers put 
together—I mean Heraclitus of Ephesus. As to 
the influence of Heraclitus upon Cleanthes, there is 
no room for doubt; we shall find, indeed, that the 
surviving fragments of the Ephesian sage are incom- 
parably the best commentary on the hymn which it 
is the object of these lectures to interpret. 

The further question, whether Cleanthes’ concep- 
tion of God and Nature may not have owed something 
to Semitic theology, is not so easy todetermine. The 
conquests and statesmanship of Alexander had pre- 
pared the way for that fusion of Eastern and Western 
thought out of which so much that is of the highest 
and most permanent value in modern religious theory 
was afterwards developed; and Sir Alexander Grant 
pointed out long ago that “not a single Stoic of note 
was a native of Greece proper’”: all of them came 
from the East, many of them “from Semitic towns 
and colonies.” He even goes so far as to say that 
the “essence of Stoicism consists in the introduction 
of the Semitic temperament and a Semitic spirit into 
Greek philosophy’.” In his essay on St Paul and 

1 The Ethics of Aristotle, vol. 1. p. 308. 
> Lbid. ὃ. Ibid. Ὁ. 309. 
8—2 


116 The Hymn of Cleanthes 


Seneca, Bishop Lightfoot has further elaborated 
this view of Stoicism, holding that “to Eastern 
affinities Stoicism was without doubt largely indebted 
for the features which distinguished it from other 
schools of Greek philosophy’,” in particular “the 
intense moral earnestness which was its most 
honourable characteristic’,” the distinctively pro- 
phetic rather than dialectical character of Stoic teach- 
ing®, its “recognition of the claims of the individual 
soul, the sense of personal responsibility, the habit 
of judicial introspection, in short the subjective view 
of ethics*’—all of which features, he asserts, now 
for the first time “presented themselves at the doors 
of Western civilisation and demanded admission’.” 
A still more striking resemblance between Stoicism 
and Judaism is to be found in the firm belief, which 
the greatest of the Stoic teachers had in the essential 
unity of the divine nature, and here it might be 
possible to quote by way of illustration the remark- 
able parallel afforded by the philosophy of Spinoza, 
between which and Stoicism the affinity is very great. 
Sir Frederick Pollock has pointed out that the 
pantheism of Spinoza’, himself by birth a Jew, was 
to a large extent a philosophical development of 
Hebrew monotheism; and in like manner it might be 
conjectured that Stoic pantheism arose in somewhat 
the same way. But in point of fact, as will be partially 


1 Dissertations on the Apostolic Age, pp. 252 ff. 
> Lhid. δε. p. 255. 
ἜΣ DD. 253. > 7.2.2 


8 Spinoza, his Life and Philosophy, chap. 111. p. 82. 


Semitic influence on Storcisne 117 


evident, I hope, from the illustrations I shall put 
before you, nearly all of these so-called Semitic ideas 
are already to be found somewhere or other in Greek 
literature, especially in the philosophy of Plato; and 
the question rather is, whether and to what extent 
the Semitic element in Stoicism, if it was really 
there, helped to bring these ideas into greater 
prominence and give them new life and vigour. 
That the Eastern origin of so many of the Stoics 
operated in this direction, there cannot, I conceive, 
be any doubt; but it is an entire mistake to separate 
the history of Stoicism from that of Greek philosophy 
in general, and so far as Cleanthes in particular is 
concerned, we have no positive evidence that he was 
in any way influenced by Semitic thought. The key 
to nearly all his greatest ideas, as I have already 
said, is to be found in Heraclitus. 

With these preliminary remarks, let us now turn 
to a consideration of the hymn itself. So far as I 
know, it has not yet been discussed and illustrated 
with the care which it deserves. Mr Pearson’s 
commentary, in his Fragments of Zeno and Cleanthes, 
is excellent so far as it goes, but it hardly professes 
to do much more than explain the text. The Hymn 
of Cleanthes demands the fullest possible treatment 
alike on its poetical, its religious and its philosophical 
side: it is in fact, like the Zzwaeus of Plato, which 
one of the ancients described as a ‘“‘hymn of the 
Universe,” a blend of poetry, religion, and philo- 
sophy, summing up not only most of the best and 
most inspiring ideas of Stoicism, without any of the 


118 The Hymn of Cleanthes 


Stoic aridity and trivialities, but also much of the 
noblest Greek thought on God and man and nature 
from Heraclitus down to Aristotle, and foreshadow- 
ing, in no obscure fashion, what we sometimes 
erroneously suppose to be the religious and _philo- 
sophical discoveries of Christendom’. 

A glance at the Hymn will show you that it falls 
naturally into four divisions. 

A. We have first the prelude (lines 1-6), the 
burden of which is “let us praise Zeus; for we are 
of his family, and made in his image.” Here it is 
apparently the ve/zgzous motive which is predomi- 
nant. 

B. The second division, extending from line 7 
to line 21, speaks of the operation of the divine 
power throughout the world: all things in external 
Nature obey the law of God. These lines contain 
more of the phzlosophy of Stoicism than any other 
part of the hymn. The religion of humanity is 
merged in a yet wider ideal—the religion of the 
universe’, 

C. In the third section, comprising from line 23 
to line 35, the poet describes how human creatures 


* Clement speaks of Cleanthes as having written ἐπιπνοίᾳ 
θεοῦ, (οὐ. ad Gentes, 180 B, Migne. 

* See Hoffding, Philos. of Religion, p. 290. This passage 
illustrates what Hoffding calls the sympathetic type of the religious 
disposition. Cf. St Paul, Rom. viii. 22 f. ‘The whole creation 
groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not 
only they, but ourselves also, which have the first-fruits of the 
Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves”: cf. also the 
conception of the λόγος in St John and in St Paul. 


Divisions of the Hymn [19 


fall away through ignorance, and prays for their 
enlightenment and restoration. The ethical and 
religious motive comes to the front again in this 
section. 

D. Finally, the note which was struck in the 
prelude is resumed at the conclusion of the hymn 
(36-39). So shall we praise the universal law, and 
thus fulfil the highest privilege accorded to men and 
gods. 


I will discuss each of these four sections in order. 


Κύδιστ᾽ ἀθανάτων, πολυώνυμε, παγκρατὲς αἰεί, 
Ζεῦ, φύσεως ἀρχηγέ, νόμου μέτα πάντα κυβερνῶν, 
χαῖρε: σὲ γὰρ πάντεσσι θέμις θνητοῖσι προσαυδᾶν. 
ἐκ σοῦ γὰρ γενόμεσθα, θεοῦ μίμημα λαχόντες 
μοῦνοι, ὅσα ζώει τε καὶ ἕρπει θνήτ᾽ ἐπὶ γαῖαν. 
τῷ σε καθυμνήσω καὶ σὸν κράτος αἰὲν ἀείσω. 

“Ὁ God most glorious, called by many a name, 
Nature’s great King, through endless years the same; 
Omnipotence, who by thy just decree 
Controllest all, hail, Zeus, for unto thee 
Behoves thy creatures in all lands to call. 

We are thy children, we alone, of all 

On earth’s broad ways that wander to and fro, 

Bearing thine image wheresoe’er we go. 

Wherefore with songs of praise thy power I will forth shew.” 


Let us begin by considering the epithet πολυώνυμε 
“called by manya name.” Cleanthes, like the Stoics 
in general, was a believer, of course, in one God, 
whom he identified, as will afterwards be seen, with 
the soul of the world, or rather with Reason imma- 
nent in the universe; and πολυώνυμε signifies that 
all the different gods of polytheism are only so many 


120 The Hymn of Cleanthes 


different names, or perhaps embodiments of the uni- 
versal Spirit, according to the different spheres in 
which that Spirit works, or—which amounts to the 
same thing—the different aspects in which he is 
regarded’. We meet with the same idea in an im- 
pressive fragment of Heraclitus*: ‘‘God is day and 
night, summer and winter, war and peace, satiety 
and hunger; but he is changed, just as, when 
incense is mingled with incense, it is named accord- 
ing to the flavour of each.” It is highly probable, 
I think, that this fragment actually suggested to the 
Stoics the method by which they contrived to recon- 
cile their philosophic pantheism with the religious 
polytheism of the Greeks; but the important point 
for us to notice is that the epithet πολυώνυμε implies 
far more than a mere ‘‘ accommodation” on the part 
of a philosopher to the popular religion. It ought 
not to be limited in its application to the gods of the 


* Cf. Max Miuller’s Atbbert Lectures, p. 311. One poet in 
the Veda, for instance, says ‘‘They call him Indra, Mitra, 
Varuna, Agni; that which is and is one, the wise name in 
diverse manners.” Cf. also the Monotheistic tendency among 
the Babylonians. In one inscription, dating perhaps from 
2000 B.C. or so, we have a list of identifications of the different 
gods with special aspects of the supreme god Merodach. 


Bél is Merodach of lordship and domination, 
Nebo δὲ ἐξ trading, etc., 
Sin a » the illumination of the night, 


and so forth. See Pinches, Zhe Religion of Babylonia and 
Assyria, p. 118. This tendency to a reconciliation with poly- 
theism is of course characteristic of pantheism in every age. 

* fr. 36 (following Bywater’s text). 


Universality of God 121 


Greek pantheon: rather it implies that all mankind, 
in every age and country, worship one and the same 
God, by whatever name they call him. Maumzna 
sicut nomina, according to the Latin saying. In 
other words, the epithet πολυώνυμε strikes at the 
very outset of the hymn a note of universalism ; the 
God whom Cleanthes invokes is not the god of the 
Greek alone, or of the barbarian: he is the God of 
the whole human race. The old exclusiveness of 
fifth century Hellenism has disappeared; and in its 
place we have the wider and more comprehensive 
ideal of a religion coextensive with humanity itself. 
It is true that Cleanthes calls his God by the dis- 
tinctively Hellenic name of Zeus; but, owing in 
large measure to the teaching of Greek drama, the 
concept of Zeus had already been universalised, more 
especially by Sophocles’ in his doctrine of a divine 
law whereof Zeus and Zeus alone is guardian, a law 
engraved by him in the hearts and consciences of all 
men, without distinction of race or creed, and of 
prior obligation to the ordinances made by man; 
and the Zeus of Cleanthes is free from every vestige 
of exclusiveness or particularism. 

The same conception, that God is god of all 
mankind, and not merely of one particular race or 
people, is again emphasized in the third line: oe 
yap πάντεσσι θέμις θνητοῖσι προσαυδᾶν : “for it is 


1 Cf. Socrates’ advice to worship God νόμῳ πόλεως, Xen. 
Mem. i. 3. τ, and Plato, Rep. 427 c, where Apollo, as the πάτριος 
ἐξηγητής of Zeus, is said to expound at Delphi the will of Zeus, 
the universal father, πᾶσιν av6pw7rors— to all mankind.” 


122 The Hymn of Cleanthes 


meet all mortal men should call upon thy name.” 
Observe now what is the foundation on which 
Cleanthes builds his dream of a universal, world- 
wide, religion. ἐκ σοῦ yap γενόμεσθα---" for we ”— 
that is all human creatures—‘‘are thine offspring, 
made in the likeness of God, alone of all things 
mortal that live and move upon the earth.” In 
Stoicism, indeed, not man alone, but universal nature 
is the creation—in a certain sense the offspring of 
God ; but man is the only creature who can properly 
be said to be made in the image of God, and it is on 
these two grounds combined—man’s kinship with 
God, and man’s likeness to God—that the poet 
declares it to be the privilege of every human 
creature to call upon his name. We have here—in 
the words ἐκ σοῦ yap γενόμεσθα-- νει is perhaps 
the most famous expression in Greek literature of 
the profoundly religious as well as_ philosophical 
doctrine of man’s celestial origin and nature, a 
doctrine that appears in nearly all the best Greek 
thought about religion from Pindar down to Epictetus, 
and is in an especial sense the property of Stoicism. 
There is, you will remember, the authority of 
St Paul for looking on this great doctrine as the 
common meeting-ground of Greek and Christian 
thought. It is true that in the speech which he 


* See Findlay in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible, s.v. Paul, 
where it is well pointed out that St Paul looks on man as God’s 
kindred, and salvation as the recovery of sonship. Cf., with 
Findlay, the use of ἀπολαμβάνω in ἵνα τὴν υἱοθεσίαν ἀπολάβωμεν, 
Gal. iy. 5, and ἀποκαταλλάσσω, Col. i. 21, 22, Eph. ii. 16 ef al. 


Kinshib between man and God 123 


delivered before the council of the Areopagus at 
Athens we find hardly a single idea, except the 
bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, which cannot be 
abundantly illustrated from Greek sources; but the 
sentiment on which the great prophet of Christianity 
as the divinely-appointed universal religion rightly 
lays most stress, is just this Stoic doctrine of the 
kinship between man and God. ‘ God—hath made 
of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all 
the face of the earth, and hath determined the times 
before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation: 
that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might 
feel after him, and find him, though he be not far 
from any one of us: for in him we live, and move, 
and have our being”—a Stoic would rather have 
said, perhaps, ‘‘God lives in us.” ‘As certain also 
of your own poets have said, For we are also his 
offspring—vov yap καὶ γένος ἐσμέν. The poet whom 
St Paul has in his mind is not indeed Cleanthes, but 
Aratus; and in all probability, as Norden in his 
Antike Kunstprosa* has pointed out, the quotation 
is taken not directly from Aratus, but from Aristo- 
bulus, a hellenizing Jew who flourished about 150 B.c., 
and was the first to maintain what afterwards became 
a favourite patristic theory, that Plato derived all his 
wisdom from Moses, being in fact only Μωυσῆς 
ἀττικίζων ‘Moses speaking in Attic Greek.” We 
know from Eusebius* that Aristobulus cited in 
support of his audacious theory that part of Aratus 
1 Acts xvil. 26-28. ᾿Ξ Pe 475: 
* Praep. Ev, xiii. 12. 6. 


124 The Hymn of Cleanthes 


poem in which St Paul’s quotation occurs, and there 
is evidence to shew that the apostle was not unac- 
quainted with the literature of Jewish Hellenism, 
whether he had read any pure Greek literature or 
not. But although it is Aratus who is responsible 
for the particular words in which St Paul here gives 
expression to the idea, the conception itself—that of 
the affinity between God and man—is, as I have said, 
characteristic not only of Stoicism, but of earlier 
Greek religious thought, indeed there is perhaps no 
idea which is more deeply rooted in Greek thought 
than this; and in order that we may understand its 
precise significance in the hymn of Cleanthes, as well 
as on account of the intrinsic importance of the 
doctrine itself, I will now call your attention to some 
of the principal stages in the development of this 
idea before the days of the Stoics. 

The first point to notice is that the doctrine in 
question was by no means alien to the ordinary 
religious consciousness of Greece, as reflected, for 
example, in the Homeric poems. Not only in 
Homer is Zeus the “father of Gods and men,” but 
it is involved in the very nature of anthropomorphic 
theology that since God resembles man, man in his 
turn resembles God. From the religious point of 
view, this is the great merit of anthropomorphism— 
that it assumes an essential unity between God and 
man. Anthropomorphism, in a word, involves theo- 
morphism; and in point of fact, as has frequently been 
remarked, there is no really essential or ultimate 


* See Hastings, Zc s.v. Paul. 


Mortal Gods and immortal men 125 


difference between the Homeric god and the Homeric 
man, except the attribute of immortality: whereas 
the blessed gods live for ever—paxapes θεοὶ αἰὲν 
€ovres—we are but children of a day. Hence it is 
not otherwise than in harmony with the spirit of 
what we may call orthodox Greek theology when 
Lucian’ makes Heraclitus say: τί δαὶ ot ἄνθρωποι ; 
θεοὶ θνητοί. τί δαὶ ot θεοί; ἄνθρωποι ἀθάνατοι: 
‘What are men? Mortal Gods. What are Gods? 
Immortal men.” But in Homer the preponderating 
stress is laid upon the human attribute of the Gods 
rather than upon the divine affinities of man; and 
the same may be said of Hesiod, in spite of occasional 
hints of the original unity of the divine and human, 
as for example when he declares that “Gods and 
mortal men are sprung of the same stock’,” and again 
in a fragment preserved by Origen, which tells of 
the ‘“‘common feasts and common assemblies” of 
gods and men in the days of primeval innocence 
and bliss*. Another point to be observed is that in 
Homer, Hesiod, and the bulk of Greek lyric poetry 
down to Pindar there is little or no suggestion of a 
spiritual affinity between man and God: man re- 
sembles God, and God is conceived in the image of 
man, but the resemblance and affinity extend to the 
outward bodily form as well as to the soul—or rather 
perhaps, much more than to the soul: for it was only 
by degrees that the notion of the soul as constituting 
the true and essential nature of the man came to the 


1 Vit. Auct. 14. 2 OD: τοῦ: 
* Fr. 187, Goettling. 


126 The [Hymn of Cleanthes 


front in Greek thought. Here, as everywhere, the 
principle holds good: “first the natural, and after- 
wards the spiritual.” 

In Pindar’s view, as shewn above’, it is only 
the spiritual nature of man, the ψυχή or soul, which 
is declared to be of divine descent. The history of 
Christian religious thought is enough to prove that 
Poetry is a most powerful agent in refining and 
purifying the religious sentiment: I need only refer 
you by way of illustration to Palgrave’s Treasury 
of Sacred Song. And the same is true of ancient 
Greece; nor indeed has this inherent power of 
Poetry ever been better exemplified than by the 
poet, who throughout his whole career believed 
himself the chosen servant of Apollo, the most 
distinctively spiritual of the Greek gods, the god 
of religious and prophetical, as well as of poetical 
inspiration. 

Although Pindar has not yet shaken himself free 
from the old Homeric conception of the ψυχή as 
nothing but the shadow of the living self, yet all the 
emphasis is upon the soul: it is only the spirit or 
soul of man, says Pindar, that comes from the Gods: 
τὸ yap ἔστι μόνον ἐκ θεῶν. Furthermore, according 
to what the poet here says, in our waking moments 
the soul is unconscious or asleep; but when the body 
is laid to rest, the soul awakes and apprehends the 
future by virtue of its divine affinity, revealing to us 
the judgment which awaits us after death. What is 
the theory underlying this conception ? Clearly it is 


1 Divine Origin of the Soul. 


Soul and body 127 


nothing but the idea familiar to most of us from the 
Phaedo of Plato, that the body is as it were the 
prison-house or tomb of the 5οι]---σῶμα δεσμωτήριον, 
σῶμα onua'—from which we are set free by the 
deliverer Death, although sleep, Death’s image and 
twin-sister, sometimes effects a partial resuscitation, 
a kind of temporary reunion of the soul with the 
fountain of her being. In somewhat the same way 
it is said by Plato in the Republic that when we 
retire to rest after having feasted the rational part 
of our nature with lofty thoughts, we may, perhaps, 
in visions of the night apprehend truths greater than 
we know’, the natural divinity of the soul reasserting 
itself, when temporarily freed from the tyranny of 
the flesh and its desires. In the literature of the 
sixth and fifth centuries before Christ, there are not 
a few traces of this profoundly religious view of the 
relationship between the soul and the body. We 
meet with it inthe Pythagorean school, in Heraclitus, 
and in Empedocles, and Euripides gives expression 
to the same thought in the well-known lines 
tis οἷδεν εἰ TO ζῆν μέν ἐστι κατθανεῖν, 
τὸ κατθανεῖν δὲ ζῆν κάτω νομίζεται; 


“Who knows if in the world beneath the ground, 
Life is accounted death, death life? who knows?” 


The general theory of human life and destiny 
involved in this conception, which is closely allied to 


' Cf. St Paul's doctrine of νέκρωσις. ‘‘ Who shall deliver me 
out of the body of this death?” Rom. vii. 24. 
PRE τ, ® Fr. 638, Nauck”. 


128 The Hlymn of Cleanthes 


Buddhism, appears to have been elaborated during 
the great religious revival, usually known as the 
Orphic revival, that spread over a large part of 
Greece during the sixth century p.c. The notion 
was that life in the body is a penance which the 
soul, itself originally a God or a portion of the divine 
essence, has to pay in consequence of ante-natal sin : 
so that the end of our endeavours 15, by the practice 
of abstinence, by religious ceremonies, and by the 
cultivation of righteousness and holiness, to keep the 
soul as far as may be pure from the contamination of 
the flesh, in order that in due time she may be qualified 
to rejoin the celestial circle from which she has been 
exiled’. But the point which chiefly concerns us 
now is that alike in the fragment of Pindar, discussed 
in the Divine Origin of the Soul, and in the Orphic 
religious discipline by which that fragment is almost 
certainly inspired, a clear distinction is drawn between 
man’s bodily nature, which is of the earth, earthy 
and perishable, and his spiritual nature or soul, which 
alone is divine, “1 am a child of earth and starry 
heaven’—yjs παῖς εἶμι καὶ οὐρανοῦ ἀστερόεντος, 
says the soul in one of the Orphic tablets found in 
S. Italy?: that is, my body is of the earth, my soul 
from heaven. The religious potentialities of this 
conception may be seen from the beautiful lines of 
the Christian poet George Herbert; quoted in the 


1 See G. Murray in Miss Harrison’s Proleg. to Gk. Keligton, 


660-67 4. 
2 Miss Harrison, /.c. p. 660. 


FHluman mind a little part of God 129 


essay on the V2tality of Platonism, p. 21. In this 
passage the words 
“Tn soul he mounts and flies, 
In flesh he dies,” 
correspond to the doctrine of σῶμα σῆμα, the body 
is the tomb; yet flesh is not quite the same as σῶμα: 
it is σῶμα tainted by sin. 

In Pindar, therefore, the doctrine of man’s 
essential divinity is to a certain extent spiritualised 
by being restricted to what he calls the soul or 
ψυχή : but he seems still to conceive of the soul in 
the old Homeric way, and he does not, at least in 
this fragment, give an intellectual interpretation to 
the doctrine: it is ψυχή, and not yet νοῦς, which 
he declares to be descended from the gods. There 
is, however, a remarkable passage in the sixth 
Nemean’ where after an emphatic assertion of the 
original unity of men and gods—év ἀνδρῶν, ἕν θεῶν 
yévos—the poet suggests that perhaps the point in 
which we resemble the immortals is in reality the 
more intellectual or spiritual part of our nature—mind 
or reason, μέγαν νόον, Pindar says. And it was in this 
direction that the doctrine of man’s celestial origin 
was developed after the time of Pindar. Thus for 
example Diogenes of Apollonia, a philosopher who 
lived at Athens during the latter part of the fifth 
century before Christ, declared that the νοῦς or 
reason within us is a little part of God (μικρὸν μόριον 
τοῦ θεοῦ)"; and Euripides, influenced no doubt by 

1 See supra, Divine Origin of the Soul, p. 39. 
2 Diels, Frag. d. Vorsokratiker’, i. p. 331, 28. 
A. E. 9 


130 The Hymn of Cleanthes 


this philosopher, speaks of the νοῦς or πνεῦμα---ἰῃς 
human mind or spirit—as akin to the aetherial 
element which in more than one passage he identifies 
with Zeus, and as destined at last to be reunited with 
or reabsorbed into the divine or universal mind from 
which it came’. 

But the thinker who more than any other of the 
Greeks intellectualised the doctrine of man’s divine 
descent was Plato. In Plato it is always νοῦς or 
reason which is divine: only we must beware of 
supposing that he conceived of νοῦς merely as the 
kind of szccum lumen, the clear cold light, the unim- 
passioned analytic and discursive intellect which we 
are sometimes in the habit of calling reason: it isa 
religious or spiritual as well as an intellectual faculty 
in Plato, the link that binds us to the godhead, 
apprehending the truth not only by means of ratioci- 
nation, but also intuitively, in virtue of its affinity 
with Him who zs the truth, Mr Nettleship’s observa- 
tions on Greek philosophy in general are specially 
applicable to Plato. ‘‘We say that Greek moral 
philosophy, as compared with modern, lays great 
stress on knowledge, and gives importance to the 
intellect. That impression arises mainly from the 
fact that we are struck by the constant recurrence of 
intellectual terminology, and omit to notice that 
reason or intellect is always conceived of as having 
to do with the good. Reason is to Greek thinkers the 
very condition of man’s having a moral being...... 

1 Eur. 47. 941, Hel. 1014 ff. quoted supra, Divine Origin 
of the Soul, pp. 47, 52. 


Reason and spirit in man 131 


Their words for reason and rational cover to a great 
extent the ground which is covered by words like 
‘spirit,’ ‘spiritual,’ and ‘ideal’ in our philosophy. 
They would have said that a man is a rational being, 
where we should say that he is a spiritual being’.” 
Understood in this way, the doctrine of man’s 
relationship to the divine is perhaps the most funda- 
mental of Plato’s doctrines. As I have elsewhere 
ventured to say, it “is the ultimate source of all his 
idealism, religious and metaphysical, no less than 
moral and political, and may well be considered the 
most precious and enduring inheritance which he 
has bequeathed to posterity*.” It would lead us too 
far from our immediate subject to justify this state- 
ment in detail; but before returning to my exposition 
of Cleanthes, I will quote to you one or two passages 
in which the founder of idealism in the western 
world gives expression to the doctrine which has 
been the watchword of idealism ever since he lived, 
and I will also point out to you one characteristic 
and historically fruitful addition which he made to 
this great doctrine. ; 

You will remember that Plato has two ways of 
representing that which he calls divine. Sometimes 
he speaks of the divine in a half-impersonal way, as 
the Idea or Form, transcendent at once and im- 
manent, eternal, changeless and invisible, the para- 
digm or type to which the world of generation and 


1 Lectures and Remains, 11. p. 221. 
> Republic of Plato, ii. p. 42. 


132 The Flymu of Cleanthes 


decay imperfectly conforms’. The totality of Ideas 
or Forms constitutes a perfectly graduated hierarchy, 
comparable to the spiritual or angelic hierarchies of 
patristic and medieval theology*; and supreme over 
all stands the one great unity, which Plato calls the 
Idea of Good. At other times, again, he uses more 
obviously religious language, representing the divine 
as what we should call a personal being, and desig- 
nating it by the name of God. From Plato's point 
of view there is not, 1 believe, any essential or 
fundamental difference between these two modes of 
presentation: in other words, the Idea of Good in 
Plato zs God, and God is the Idea of Good: for to 
Plato philosophy and religion are one and the same 
thing, and could not be otherwise, inasmuch as God 
is the supreme truth, and we apprehend him through 
the divine faculty of reason. Similarly in Dante— 
God is at once the good, the object of universal 
desire, the final goal of all particular and immediate 
striving, and yet at the same time a personal being, 
the creative cause of all that is. Now whichever of 


* Cf. ἀντίτυπα τῶν ἀληθινῶν in the Hebrews, ix. 24. The 
writer of the Hebrews is an “idealist whose heaven is the 
home of all transcendental realities, whose earth is full of their 
symbols, and these are most abundant where earth is most 
sacred—in the temple (or tabernacle) and worship of his people.” 
He is Alexandrian too “in his frequent contrasts between the 
invisible, imperishable, archetypal world, and the visible, perish- 
able world of appearance, the imperfect copy (ὑπόδειγμα) of the 
former.” Massie in Hastings, Zc. s.v. Allegory. 

* See Lightfoot on Col. i. 16 and cf. Dante, Convito, τι. c. 6: 
Paradiso, Xxvul. 098 ff. 


Human mind essentially divine 133 


the two forms of expression—personal or impersonal 
—we prefer, it is possible to find numerous passages 
in Plato, where the affinity of the human mind or 
spirit to the divine is emphatically affirmed. Such 
passages are to be found in 77zmaeus 90 ἢ, Phaedo 
γος ff., and especially Republec 501 B, 589 A, where 
Plato implies that we are truly human just in pro- 
portion as we are divine. This teaching was after- 
wards worked out by Aristotle and the Stoics; and 
when Aristotle in the Mzcomachean Ethics, x. 7, 9, 
says that it would seem that the divine or rational 
part of man is actually the self, inasmuch as it is the 
supreme or better part of man, it follows that 
self-realisation, in the true sense of the word, will 
consist in the cultivation and development of the 
immortal part of our nature, and the ethical end for 
man can be expressed in the formula ἐφ᾽ ὅσον 
ἐνδέχεται, ἀθανατίζειν: ‘so far as in thee lies, put on 
the immortal.” The lower merely mortal appetites, 
that clog and thwart the soul, are alien to our true 
nature as human beings: by yielding to them we 
follow a life that is not our own: the way to attain 
our true and proper individuality is to 


““Move upward, working out the beast 
And let the ape and tiger die’.” 


On the deeper religious and philosophical sig- 
nificance of this great doctrine of man’s ideal and 
essential unity with God, the history of which I have 


* For a fuller discussion of this subject see supra, Divine 
Origin of the Soul, pp. 62 ff. 


134 The Hymn of Cleanthes 


thus briefly traced from Pindar down to Aristotle, I 
will not on this occasion dwell. It is admirably 
brought out by Principal Caird in his Gifford lectures 
on The Fundamental Ideas of Christeantty, a book 
which I would ask you to read as a sequel to these 
lectures. It may however be noted that according 
to St Paul the highest element in man, which he 
terms πνεῦμα, is the part of our nature by which we 
are allied to God, and that he sometimes denotes this 
principle by the Platonic term νοῦς, which means the 
πνεῦμα seeking to apprehend divine things’. What 
concerns us chiefly at present is to understand its 
significance in Stoicism; and on this subject 1 will 
now say a few words, at the same time recommending 
you to study the meditations of Marcus Aurelius, 
translated by Rendall, and the discourses of Epictetus, 
in Mr Long’s translation. After what has hitherto 
been said, you will readily understand that in pro- 
nouncing man to be the offspring of God—ék σοῦ 
yap yevonerOa—Cleanthes means simply that the 
intellectual and spiritual part of our nature, that is to 
Say, Our vovs or reason, is in the fullest sense of the 
term divine, a fragment or efflux, as the Stoics fre- 
quently maintained, of God. This is a cardinal 
doctrine of Stoic anthropology, from Zeno* down to 
Marcus Aurelius; but it is much more prominent in 
later than in earlier Stoicism, and for that reason 
most of my illustrations will be drawn from Epictetus 


* See Adam, Religious Teachers of Greece, p. 381 f. 
* See e.g. Fragment 95 in Pearson’s Fragments of Zeno and 
Cleanthes. 


\ 
᾿ 
᾿ 
, 
Ι 
' 
' 
β 


Divinity of man in Storcrsm 135 


and his pupil the Roman Emperor. Marcus Aurelius 
never wearies of ringing the changes on this idea. 
“God sees men’s Inner Selves stripped of their 
material shells and husks and impurities. Mind to 
mind, his mental being touches only the like elements 
in us derivative and immanent from him’.”  Else- 
where he speaks of the “God” or “daemon” or 
“divine element” within us’, “my God and daemon’,” 
the spirit which is “‘mind and God,” whereas the 
body is but “refuse clay‘,” and identifies the spirit 
with the true self, the inner man or ego, that part of 
our nature which alone can truly be called our own’. 
“That which pulls the strings, remember, is the 
power concealed within; there is the mandate, the 
life, there, one may say, the man. Never confound 
it with the mere containing shell, and the various 
appended organs. They may be compared to tools, 
with this difference, that the connexion is organic. 
Indeed, apart from the inner cause which dictates 
action or inaction, the parts are of no more use than 
the weaver’s shuttle, the writer’s pen, or the coach- 
man’s whip*.” 

Let us now consider some of the implications 
which this doctrine carries with it in Stoicism. What 
bearing has the belief in man’s celestial origin and 
kinship upon his conception, first of the duty he owes 
to himself, and secondly of the duty he owes to his 
fellow-men? I will take these two points separately. 


* x11. 2, tr. Rendall. 2 i. τῷ IIL. 5 XI. ΤΕΥ κα 
τὰ Τῷ 10, * π|. 3, tr. Rendall. μῶρος γ΄. 
σα 38, tr. Rendall. 


136 The Flymu of Cleanthes 


First then, as to the duty we owe to ourselves. 
The keynote of Stoic morality, so far as concerns 
the individual in his relation to himself, is contained 
in the following passages of Epictetus. “1 a man 
should be able to assent to this doctrine as he ought, 
that we are all sprung from God in one especial 
manner, and that God is the father both of men and 
of gods, I suppose that he would never have any 
ignoble or mean thoughts about himself. But if 
Caesar (the emperor) should adopt you, no one 
could endure your arrogance; and if you know that 
you are the son of Zeus, will you not be elated? Yet 
we do not so; but since these two things are mingled 
in the generation of man, body in common with the 
animals, and reason and intelligence in common with 
the gods, many incline to this kinship, which is 
miserable and mortal; and some few to that which 
is divine and happy. Since then it is of necessity 
that every man uses everything according to the 
opinion which he has about it, those, the few, who 
think that they are formed for fidelity and modesty 
and a sure use of appearances have no mean or 
ignoble thoughts about themselves; but with the 
many it is quite the contrary. For they say, What 
am I? A poor, miserable man, with my wretched 
bit of flesh. Wretched, indeed; but you possess 
something better than your bit of flesh. Why then 
do you neglect that which rs better, and why do you 
attach yourselves to this'?” “Nevertheless he” 
‘(that is, Zeus) “thas placed by every man a guardian, 
tidy 3. thy eons: 


Man's duty to himself 137 


every man’s Daemon, to whom he has committed 
the care of the man, a guardian who never sleeps, is 
never deceived. For to what better and more care- 
ful guardian could he have intrusted each of us? 
When then you have shut the doors and made 
darkness within, remember never to say that you are 
alone, for you are not; but God is within, and your 
Daemon is within, and what need have they of light 
to see what you are doing? To this God you ought 
to swear an oath just as the soldiers do to Caesar. 
But they who are hired for pay swear to regard the 
safety of Caesar before all things; and you who have 
received so many and such great favours, will you 
not swear, or when you have sworn, will you not 
abide by your oath? And what shall you swear? 
Never to be disobedient, never to make any charges, 
never to find fault with anything that he has given, 
and never unwillingly to do or to suffer anything 
that is necessary. Is this oath like the soldier's 
oath? The soldiers swear not to prefer any man to 
Caesar: in this oath men swear to honour themselves 
before all’.” Side by side with these two passages set 
the following from Marcus Aurelius: ‘Live with the 
gods (συζῆν θεοῖς). And he lives with the gods, 
whoever presents to them his soul acceptant of their 
dispensations, and busy about the will of God, even 
that particle of Zeus, which Zeus gives to every man 
for his controller and governor—to wit, his mind and 
reason.” You will see that from one point of view 
the God within us, that is, our mind or spirit, appears 
1 7, 14, tr. Long. 2 y, 27, tr. Rendall. 


138 The Hymn of Cleanthes 


as an internal oracle,a guide whom we are to follow: 
“walk with God” (ἀκολούθησον θεῷ), says Marcus 
Aurelius’. With this may be compared Heraclitus’ 
ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν", and the Brahmanism of the 
Upanishads, as exemplified in the following lines: 
“Whoso shall find him the awaken’d Self, 

that lodgeth in this darkling patch’d-up house, 

builder of all is he, the All he maketh; 

his is the world, the world in sooth is he. 

When straightway he beholdeth god in Self 

sovran of what hath been and is to be, 

his thought no more shall waver in its way*.” 

From another point of view this divine faculty 
may be regarded as conscience: ‘‘God is near thee,” 
we read in Seneca, “with thee, within thee...there 
dwells in us a holy spirit (sacer zxtra nos spiritus 
sedet), to keep watch and ward over our good and 
evil deeds (malorum bonorumgue nostrorum ob- 
servator et custos).” To the same effect Epictetus 
writes : ‘ When we are children our parents deliver 
us to a paedagogue to take care on all occasions that 
we suffer no harm. But when we are become men, 
God delivers us to our innate conscience (ἐμφύτῳ 
συνειδήσει) to take care of us. This guardianship 
then we must in no way despise, for we shall both 
displease God and be enemies to our own conscience’.” 

Or again the divine particle within us is repre- 
sented as a treasure or talent committed to our 

Ἢ VIL 31, tr. Rendall. Cf. ἕπεσθαι θεοῖς, X11. 27. 

= dir. 86. * Barnett, Hinduism, p. 16. 4 pats 4: 


° Fr. 97, tr. Long. Doubts have been held as to the authen- 
ticity of this fragment ; but in sentiment, at least, it is Stoic. 


Aspects of the divine faculty in man 139 


charge. ‘‘ Keep the deity within inviolate and free 
from scathe’.” “Keep your God within pure and 
erect, as though at any moment liable to be re- 
called*.” Man's duty is “to keep the god implanted 
in his breast unsoiled, not perturbed by any tumult 
of impressions, keeping his watch serene, a seemly 
follower of god, not false to truth in utterance or to 
justice in act®.” Passages such as these have often 
been compared with the words of St Paul: “ Know 
ye not that ye are a temple of God, and that the 
spirit of God dwelleth in you*?” ‘Know ye not 
that your body is a temple of the Holy Ghost which 
is in you, which ye have from God*?” and it is 
certain, not only that a Stoic might quite well have 
used this language, but also that the ethical motive 
to which the Apostle here appeals—honour the 
divine element within you—plays a very great part 
in later Greek Stoicism. But when St Paul con- 
tinues: ‘‘and ye are not your own; for ye were 
bought with a price®’—he adds a new and far more 
powerful motive, a motive which, as will afterwards 
be pointed out, is the one great and fundamental 
difference between Christianity on the one hand, and 
Greek philosophy upon the other, the stimulus of a 
divine yet human personality, in whose death we live 
by dying unto sin. 

Finally, the divine element within us is sometimes 
conceived of by the Stoics as a kind of God-given 


2 


1 11. 17, tr. Rendall. 11. 12, after Rendall. 
> 1. 16, tr. Rendall. 4 + Cor. iii. 16. 
° Lbid. vi. 19. ° 7614. 


140 The Hymn of Cleanthes 


seed or germ, which it is our privilege and duty to 
cultivate and develop. ‘It suffices,” says Marcus 
Aurelius’, ‘to attend only to the daemon within 
oneself and truly cultivate it.” The Stoics were no. 
believers in pre-existence, as pre-existence was 
understood by Plato; but if Epictetus and others may 
be trusted, neither did they hold that the mind is at 
birth no more than a ¢adula vasa, a blank sheet of 
paper for the registration merely of sense-impressions: 
nor indeed could such a view have possibly been 
entertained by those who regarded the human mind 
as from the first a portion of the divine. On the 
contrary, according to the express statement of 
Epictetus, we have certain “innate notions” on such 
subjects as good and evil, honourable and base, the 
becoming and the unbecoming, what we ought to do 
and what we ought not to do’, etc. These “innate 
notions” were called in Stoicism ἔμφυτοι προλήψεις : 
and they were strictly limited to the domain of 
morality, aesthetics and religion: thus, for example, 
we have no ἔμφυτος πρόληψις of a right-angled 
triangle, but the notion of God’s existence, on the 
other hand, is innate*. At first, however, these ideas 
are undeveloped and obscure—obscurae, adumbratae 
intellegentiae, Cicero calls them, xotztzae parvae rerum 
maximarum tanguam elementa virtutis*; and it is 
only after they have been articulated (διηρθρωμέναι 
προλήψεις) by self-conscious, reflective thought that 


ee Ae ee ei ΠῚ ἢ 
ὃ Ibid. and Cic. WV. D. τι. 12 and 45. 
* Laws, 1. 26 and 59: De fin. ν. 59. 


Duty of self-vrealisation [41 


they begin to have a positive value’. In this way 
the moral progress of the individual becomes a 
process of emulation or development of what is 
already present in the mind by reason of its divine 
affinity, in other words a process of self-realisation, 
the word self being understood as usual of the inner 
or higher self, that is the human nature in so far as 
it is also divine. Self-realisation is one of the 
cardinal principles of Stoic ethics. 

Up to this point, I have spoken only of the way in 
which the Stoic teachers’ conception of man’s affinity 
with God affected their view of what may be called 
personal morality. But, it may fairly be asked, was 
morality, then, in Stoicism, only self-regarding? This 
is a reproach which has often been brought against 
the system ; and we must allow that there is reason 
for such a reproach in the somewhat academic 
pictures which they often draw of the wise man—the 
ideal type of perfect virtue, perfect apathy (in the 
classic meaning of the word), and perfect self- 
sufficiency. If we turn, however, to the works of 
Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius—and the spirit which 
animates these writers is altogether in keeping with 
the latter half of Cleanthes’ hymn—we shall find that 
the Stoic conception of self-realisation or self-culture 
was not and could not possibly be purely selfish or 
self-regarding, just because the self which the Stoic 
endeavours to realise is essentially the universal, and 
not what we should call the individual self at all. 


1 See on the whole subject Bonhoffer, Zpzctet u. die Stoa, 
187 ff. 


142 The Flymn of Cleanthes 


The divine faculty of reason is not the monopoly of 
the wise man: it exists in every human being, the 
pledge of our common brotherhood, the proof of the 
universal fatherhood of God. Marcus Aurelius is 
always reiterating the doctrine that man’s brotherhood 
with all mankind depends not on ‘blood or the 
generative seed, but on community in mind” (vod 
κοινωνία)", for ‘‘each man’s mind,” he says, “‘is god, 
an efflux of deity*.” It follows that the ideal man 
never ‘‘forgets his bond of brotherhood with every 
rational creature*”’: “ΤΟΥ it is the distinctive property 
of a rational being to love his neighbours*.” ‘‘We 
are made for co-operation,” says Marcus Aurelius’, 
“like the feet, the hands, the eyelids, the upper and 
the lower rows of teeth.” “You are part of a social 
whole, a factor necessary to complete the sum; there- 
fore your every action should help to complete the 
social life. Any action of yours that does not tend, 
directly or remotely, to this social end, dislocates life 
and infringes its unity. It is an act of sedition, and 
like some separatist doing what he can to break 
away from civic accord®.” Hence the Stoic con- 
ception of self-realisation, so far from being monastic, 
can only be attained through the service of others. 
“No one outside the pale of Christianity,” says 
Mr Dill, ‘thas perhaps ever insisted so powerfully on 
the obligation to live for others...as Seneca has 


i M126, * Tbid. tr. Rendall. 

ΠΙ. 4, tr. Rendall. 

ἴδιον τῆς λογικῆς ψυχῆς, TO φιλεῖν τοὺς πλησίον. XI. 1. 
Il. τ, tr. Rendall. ® IX. 23, tr. Rendall. 


ὧν 


rss 


on 


Duty of socal service 143 


done.” And in this respect Seneca is but the repre- 
sentative of later Stoicism. ‘‘ Man is made for kind- 
ness,” we read in Marcus Aurelius, ‘‘and whenever 
he does an act of kindness or otherwise helps forward 
the common good, he thereby fulfils the law of his 
being and comes by his own®.” And in another 
passage ‘‘Do that which reason, your king and 
lawgiver suggests for the help of men (ἐπ᾿ ὠφελείᾳ 
ἀνθρώπων)". It is all summed up in a single 
pregnant text of Marcus Aurelius: φίλησον τὸ 
ἀνθρώπινον γένος: ἀκολούθησον θεῷ: “love mankind: 
walk with God‘.” You cannot walk with God, ux/ess 
you love mankind. 

The highest expression of what may be called 
the social side of Stoicism is the doctrine of world- 
citizenship, for which the teaching of Socrates and 
Plato had already prepared the way. It is a favourite 
Stoic idea that the world is a μεγάλη πόλις, a great 
city, whose citizens are men and gods—men being 
as it were the children, and God the universal 
father®, ‘Est enim mundus,’ says Cicero, ‘‘ guasi 
communis deorum atgue hominum domus aut urbs 
utrorumgue’.” \Nithin this great community the 
earlier Stoics, it is true, recognised a narrower and 
more exclusive commonwealth, analogous in some 


1 


Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius, p. 326. 

2 1x. 42, tr. Rendall. 3 iv. 12, tr. Rendall. 

4 vil. 31, tr. Rendall. 

5. We are as it were παῖδες σὺν ἀνδράσι in the World-City. See 
Von Arnim, Stotcorum veterum fragmenta, Ul. 334- 

6 De Nat. Deor. il. 154. 


144 The Hymn of Cleanthes 


respects to the conception of a church, and em- 
bracing only the good or wise. ‘‘Only good men,” 
said Zeno, “are fellow-citizens and friends and rela- 
tions and free men’”: between fools or sinners there 
is nothing but enmity”, But, owing in some degree 
to the fact that the Stoic wise man always remained 
an unrealisable aspiration or ideal, the common- 
wealth of the wise plays a comparatively small 
part in practical as opposed to theoretical Stoicism ; 
and in Epictetus and his pupil it is nearly always 
the wider and more comprehensive ideal that pre- 
vails. ‘(In so far as | am Antoninus,” said Marcus, 
“my city and fatherland is Rome, but as a human 
being, it is the world” (πόλις καὶ πατρίς, ὡς μὲν 
᾿Αντωνίνῳ, μοι ἡ Ῥώμη, ws δὲ ἀνθρώπῳ, ὁ κόσμος. 
In Epictetus, again, we read “1 the things are 
true which are said by the philosophers about the 
kinship between God and man, what else remains 
for men to do than what Socrates did? Never in 
reply to the question, to what country you belong, 
say that you are an Athenian or a Corinthian, but 
that you are a citizen of the world (κόσμιος).... 
He then who...has learned that the greatest and 
supreme and the most comprehensive community 
is that which is composed of men and God, and 
that from God have descended the seeds not only 
to my father and grandfather, but to all beings 
which are generated on the earth and are produced, 
and particularly to rational beings—for these only 


1 Fr. 149, Pearson. 2 Ibid. 154. 
ΓΙῸ 


Universal brotherhood 145 


are by their nature formed to have communion 
with God, being by means of reason conjoined 
with him—why should not such a man call himself 
a citizen of the world, why not a son of God*?” 
In this great commonwealth, slaves as well as 
freemen participate, sinners as well 85 saints. 
Writing against the inconsiderate treatment of 
slaves, Epictetus observes: “Slave yourself, will 
you not bear with your own brother, who has Zeus 
for his progenitor, and is like a son from the same 
seeds and of the same descent from above?... Will 
you not remember who you are, and whom you 
rule? that they are kinsmen, that they are brethren 
by nature, that they are the offspring of Zeus’?” 
And Marcus Aurelius for his part speaks of the 
sinner as a brother, “participating not indeed in 
the same flesh and blood, but in the same mind 
and partnership with the divine®”: they err un- 
willingly, he says, through ignorance*: “teach them 
then, or bear with them’.” Tout savozr, Cest tout 
pardonner. With this we may compare the fol- 
lowing fragment. ‘A pirate had been cast on the 
land and was perishing through the tempest. A 
man took clothing and gave it to him, and brought 
the pirate into his house, and supplied him with 
everything else that was necessary. When the man 
was reproached by a person for doing kindness to 
the bad, he replied, I have shown this regard not 


1 1. 9, tr. Long. 2 1. 13, tr. Long. Cf. Dill, 4¢ p. 328. 
$ ir. 1, tr. Rendall. Wes. 
δ. VIII. 59, tr. Rendall. 


A. E. Io 


146 The Flymn of Cleanthes 


to the man, but to mankind.” If we would under- 
stand the true historical significance of the Stoic 
cosmopolitanism, we must above all things remember 
that it is essentially a religious ideal, since the bond 
of citizenship is man’s unity with man in virtue of 
his unity with God. It is the prototype, and so 
far as Greek thought is concerned, in part at least 
the progenitor of the Christian czvztas dez or “city 
of God.” In Marcus Aurelius we have the very 
phrase: ‘‘‘ Dear city of Cecrops!’ saith the poet, 
and wilt thou not say ‘ Dear city of God’’?” We 
have a kind of unconscious prophecy in a noble 
fragment of Cicero's de republica, a fragment in- 
spired by what is best and most enduring in the 
philosophy of Plato and the Stoics: ‘And there will 
not be one law at Rome and another at Athens, 
one law to-day and another law to-morrow; but the 
same law everlasting and unchangeable will bind all 
nations at all times; and there will be one common 
Master and Ruler of all, even God, the framer, the 
arbitrator, and the proposer of this law. And he 
who will not obey it will be an exile from himself, 
and, despising the nature of man—zxaturam hominum 
aspernatus—will, by virtue of that very act, suffer 
the greatest of all penalties, even though he shall 
have escaped all other punishments which can be 
imagined’.” Christianity has done something to 


1 Pseudo-Epictetus, 7. 109, tr. Long. 
* Iv. 23, tr. Rendall. 
δ ΠΙ|. c. 22, tr. Churton Collins (Studies in Shakespeare, 


Dp. 129). 


Cosmopolitanism a religious ideal 147 


bring this ideal nearer; but it can only be fully 
realised when the prayer is fulfilled: “Thy king- 
dom come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in 
heaven’.” 

Enough has now been said by way of ex- 
pounding and illustrating the doctrine of man’s 
divine descent as it appears not only in Stoicism 
but also in earlier Greek literature. Let us now 
proceed to discuss the second division of the hymn. 
We shall find it, I think, equal in point of interest 
and importance to the first. 


\ Ν ~ 9 ’ ε ’ ἈΝ “-“ 
σοὶ δὴ πᾶς ὅδε κόσμος, ἑλισσόμενος περὶ γαῖαν, 
πείθεται, ἧ κεν ἄγῃς, καὶ ἑκὼν ὑπὸ σεῖο κρατεῖται" 
τοῖον ἔχεις ὑποεργὸν ἀνικήτοις ἐνὶ χερσὶν 
> ΄ /, > 5 ’ ’ 
ἀμφήκη, πυρόεντ᾽, αἰειζώοντα κεραυνόν" 
-“ A ε Ἀ - , 7 = ae ~ 
τοῦ yap ὑπὸ πληγῆς φύσεως πάντ᾽ ἔργα «τελεῖται». 
ΑΒ Ν , Ν , ἃ Ν / 
ᾧ σὺ κατευθύνεις κοινὸν λόγον, ὃς διὰ πάντων 
φοιτᾷ, μιγνύμενος μεγάλοις μικροῖς τε φάεσσιν. 
ὡς τόσσος γεγαὼς ὕπατος βασιλεὺς διὰ παντός. 
SQ 7 , μὲ eure \ a / a 
οὐδέ τι γίγνεται ἔργον ἐπὶ χθονὶ σοῦ δίχα, δαῖμον, 
» > > , ~ ‘ > 2% ’ 
οὔτε Kat αἰθέριον θεῖον πόλον ovT ἐνὶ πόντῳ, 
Ἀ ε / επ \ , > ’ 
πλὴν ὁπόσα ῥέζουσι κακοὶ σφετέρῃσιν ανοίαις. 
ἀλλὰ σὺ καὶ τὰ περισσά «τ: ἐπίστασαι ἄρτια θεῖναι, 
\ - »” ἈΝ 5 / Ν ’ Ε] A 
καὶ κοσμεῖν τἄκοσμα, Kal ov φίλα σοὶ φίλα ἐστίν. 
« Ν > a i“ , > 6 Ν - 
ὧδε yap εἰς ἐν πάντα συνήρμοκας ἐσθλὰ κακοῖσιν, 
tal > ¢ ΄ὔ ΄ , 28 27 
ὥσθ᾽ ἕνα γίγνεσθαι πάντων λόγον αἰὲν ἐόντα. 
“Lo! yonder Heaven, that round the earth is wheeled, 
᾽ 
Follows thy guidance, still to thee doth yield 


Glad homage; thine unconquerable hand 
Such flaming minister, the levin-brand 


1 Cf. Dill, Zc p. 328: “The Stoic school has the glory of 
anticipating the diviner dream, yet far from realised, of a human 
brotherhood under the light from the Cross.” 


100-25 


148 The Flymn of Cleanthes 


Wieldeth, a sword two-edged, whose deathless might 
Pulsates through all that Nature brings to light ; 
Vehicle of the universal Word, that flows 

Through all, and in the light celestial glows 

Of stars both great and small. O King of kings 
Through ceaseless ages, God, whose purpose brings 
To birth, whate’er on land or in the sea 

Is wrought, or in high heaven’s immensity ; 

Save what the sinner works infatuate. 

Nay, but thou knowest to make crooked straight : 
Chaos to thee is order: in thine eyes 

The unloved is lovely, who didst harmonise 
Things evil with things good, that there should be 
One Word through all things everlastingly.” 


The general idea running through these lines 
is that the whole of external Nature, organic and 
inorganic, yields implicit obedience to the law of 
God: and if we look at them in connexion with the 
next division of the poem (extending from line 22 
to line 35), we shall see that one of the objects of 
Cleanthes is to contrast Nature’s obedience with 
man’s disobedience. For a Christian parallel we 
may compare the lines of Henry Vaughan: 


‘“‘Sometimes I sit with Thee, and tarry 
An hour or two, then vary. 
Thy other creatures in this scene 
Thee only aim, and mean; 
Some rise to seek Thee, and with heads 
Erect, peep from their beds ; 
Others, whose birth is in the tomb, 
And cannot quit the womb, 
Sigh there, and groan for Thee, 
Their liberty. 
I would I were a stone, or tree, 
Or flower by pedigree, 


Nature's obedience to Goa 149 


Or some poor highway herb, or spring 
To flow, or bird to sing! 
Then should I—tied to one sure state— 
All day expect my date; 
But I am sadly loose, and stray 
A giddy blast each way; 
O let me not thus range! 
Thou canst not change?.” 
But the verses of Cleanthes need elucidation in 
nearly every detail. I will first endeavour to ex- 
plain their meaning in such a way as to disentangle 
the principal ideas which they express: and after- 
wards I will discuss and illustrate these ideas at 
greater length. 

“Then all this universe, circling around the earth, obeys, 
following thy guidance, and willingly accepts thy rule: such a 
minister hast thou in thine unconquered hands, two-edged, fire- 
fraught, the ever-living thunderbolt: for under its pulsations all 
the works of nature are accomplished. Therewith thou directest 
the universal Word, that moves through all things, mingling with 
the great and lesser lights.” 

We have here, you will observe, three appa- 
rently distinct conceptions—first the supreme God 
or Zeus, who is addressed throughout: second the 
ever-living thunderbolt, his minister: and thirdly, 
the κοινὸς λόγος or universal Word or Reason, 
represented as carried to and fro throughout the 
world by means of the thunderbolt as the shuttle 
carries the thread. In reality, however, the thunder- 
bolt and the Universal Word are not numerically 
separate either from the supreme God or from 

1 Creation waiting for Deliverance (Palgrave, Treasury of 
Sacred Song, p. 91). 


150 The EHymn of Cleanthes 


one another: they are only two different aspects, 
in which the highest Unity reveals himself to us, 
two mutually complementary points of view from 
which the human intellect regards him’. We must 
not forget that Stoicism is a monistic and not a 
dualistic system: to the Stoic there is nothing 
outside God, who is the universe or all: what we 
call matter and what we call spirit are a unity in 
him. What then does the poet mean by the “ever- 
living thunderbolt”? This oracular phrase is taken 
from Heraclitus, who in one fragment speaks of the 
“ever-living fire’,” and in another says that ‘the 
thunderbolt steers all things” (τὰ δὲ πάντα οἰακίζει 
κεραυνός). Now in Heraclitus ‘the thunderbolt” is 
only a poetical synonym for the material aspect of 
the γνώμη or λόγος, the thought that interpenetrates 
and rules the world; and similarly in Cleanthes, 
the ‘“ever-living thunderbolt” means the immanent, 
omnipresent Godhead regarded on what may be 
called his material or physical side. The Stoics, 
indeed, sometimes go so far as to identify the 
Deity with a species of fire, exactly as Heraclitus 
appears to have done: one of their definitions of 
God is “creative ive, proceeding systematically to 
the generation of the world‘”; that is to say, 

* Just so in the Zimaeus of Plato, the δημιουργός is not to 
be viewed as distinct from the Idea on the model of which he 
frames the world: he zs that Idea, regarded in its creative or 
movent aspect. 

2 Fr. 20. ° Fr. 28. 

* πῦρ τεχνικόν, ὁδῷ βαδίζον ἐπὶ γενέσει κόσμου Aetius 1. 7. ge 


p. 306, Diels. 


The ever-living thunderbolt [51 


evolving the world from himself according to the 
unalterable law of his own being; although, when 
speaking more exactly, they prefer to use the word 
‘“aether” of the divine substance—a curious an- 
ticipation, by the way, of recent theories of the 
structure of matter. A further point deserving of 
notice in connexion with the expression “ ever- 
living thunderbolt” is this. We have seen that the 
Stoics spared no effort to reinterpret the popular 
religion in terms of their own philosophy, by the 
extensive use of allegory; and you will remember 
that the thunderbolt is always in Greek poetry 
and art the emblem of Zeus: nay more, Zeus was 
worshipped as God of the thunderbolt (Ζεὺς xe- 
pavvios), and sometimes as the thunderbolt itself 
(Ζεὺς κεραυνός"). Thus, while following his master 
Heraclitus, Cleanthes at the same time contrives to 
give a philosophical interpretation, as philosophers 
are wont to do, to a familiar article of the popular 
creed. 

The phrase ‘beneath whose pulsations all the 
works of Nature are accomplished,” is an allusion to 
the characteristically Stoic doctrine of τόνος, that is, a 
certain intrinsic tension or strain present in the 
original divine substance out of which the universe 
is formed, a doctrine about which I| will only say 
now that it is another curious foreshadowing of 
certain modern theories of the constitution of the 
atom. Passing over this subject, let us consider 
what Cleanthes wishes us to understand by the κοινὸς 

1 In Mantinca. See Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, 1. p. 45. 


152 Lhe Hymn of Cleanthes 


λόγος, the universal word or reason that ‘‘moves 
through all things, mingling with the great and lesser 
lights.” As the “thunderbolt” expresses the material, 
so the “universal word” expresses what we should 
call the spiritual aspect of the immanent, omnipresent 
Godhead. We are told by Tertullian that Cleanthes 
conceived of the λόγος as a spzritus permeator unt- 
versttatis—a spirit pernieating the universe’; and 
another authority informs us that he considered God 
to be the soul of the world (τὴν τοῦ κόσμου ψυχήν)". 
Here, then, we have the great doctrine of the Logos 
in its Greek form—a doctrine which, as I hope to 
show you presently, reaches back to Heraclitus, and 
forward to St John, although in the fourth Gospel it 
doubtless owes something to Hebrew influence, and 
is undoubtedly transformed and transfigured by the 
introduction of an element which is neither Greek 
nor Hebrew, but in the true and etymological mean- 
ing of the word, exclusively Christian. 

The lines that follow touch incidentally on the 
question of free-will and moral responsibility : ‘Nor is 
aught done without thy will, O Lord, on earth, or in 
the aetherial firmament divine, or in the sea, except 
what evil men do through their own folly”: and 
thereafter we have a profoundly religious characteri- 
sation of the Godhead as the Harmony in whom all 
discord, both physical and moral, is reconciled. 
‘Nay, but thou knowest also how to make odd even, 
and bring order out of chaos; and the unloved is 
loved by thee. For thou hast joined together into 


1 Cleanthes, . 7. 12, Pearson. 2 F754. 


The Logos and cosmic harmony 153 


one whole all things good with all things evil, in 
such a way that all make up one universal Word, 
existent evermore.” 

The topics which have emerged in this some- 
what rapid survey of the second division of the 
hymn are three in number. There is first, the 
immanence of God in the world: secondly, the con- 
ception of God as the discors concordia rerum—the 
cosmic harmony in which all partial discords are 
comprehended and conciliated : and finally, we have 
the question of free-will, with all that it involves 
about the origin of moral evil in the world. The 
last of these topics can best be dealt with as an 
appendix or epilogue to the other two; and the two 
first are only somewhat slightly different phases of 
the Logos doctrine, the full meaning and significance 
of which I will now endeavour to expound. 

Here, as formerly, we must begin with Heraclitus. 
We are expressly told by Clement of Alexandria 
that Heraclitus declared fire to be God’; and 
although none of the extant fragments affirms the 
identity in so many words, it can be shown, I think, 
that this omnipresent rational fire which he calls 
λόγος is in point of fact Heraclitus’ conception of the 
Godhead. It would lead us too far to trace the 
history of the doctrine of the divine immanence in 
Greek literature from Heraclitus down to the Stoics; 
and I must content myself with saying that it under- 


1 Coh. ad Gent. 5. 165 4, Migne. 
2 Fora full discussion of the steps by which this conclusion is 
reached, see supra, The Doctrine of the Logos in Heraclitus, pp. 79 ff. 


154 The Fymn of Cleanthes 


went the usual process of spiritualisation—“ first the 
natural and afterwards the spiritual”—through the 
influence of poetry and philosophy’—until we meet 
with it in an altogether dematerialised or spiritual 
form in the Platonic theory of the cosmic or world 
soul. It should also be remarked that whereas in 
Heraclitus God is conceived of only as immanent 
and not as transcendent, in conformity with the 
usual trend of pantheistic theology, Plato on the 
other hand represents the world-soul as distinct from 
the Creator or supreme God, as it were his vice- 
gerent in the world of space and time, an emanation, 
as 1t would seem, from his own transcendence; and 
thus the Platonic form of the doctrine satisfies the 
two essential conditions of theism, according to 
which the Godhead is at once transcendent and 
immanent. The Stoics, as we have seen, reverted 
to Heraclitus in both particulars, affirming only the 
immanence of God in their doctrine of the omni- 
present Logos, and denying the duality of matter 
and spirit through their identification of the Logos 
with πνεῦμα ἔνθερμον, “warm breath” or “aether.” 
Let me endeavour to show you in a little more 
detail how this conception of the divine immanence 
and omnipresence was worked out by Stoicism, 


* See especially the fragments of Epicharmus, ed. Kaibel. 
In Euripides, too, we have a kindred conception: see Adam, 
feligious Teachers of Greece, pp. 299 ff.: and something of the 
same kind meets us in Anaxagoras, Diogenes of Apollonia (in 
whom, however, the materialism reappears), and in Socrates: 
ibid. pp. 261 ff., 266f., 348 fF. 


All-pervading Godhead 155 


before I proceed to remark upon its religious mean- 
ing and value. 

The all-pervading Deity or world-soul or Logos 
—for these different designations, together with 
many others, such as Justice, Providence and Fate, 
are practically synonymous, or at most express but 
different ways in which the human mind conceives of 
the divine unity—this all-pervading Godhead was 
regarded by the Stoics as a spirit or πνεῦμα---ἃ kind 
of “atmospheric current” present in every form of 
matter, whether organic or inorganic: but the degree 
of tension or strain persisting in the mvedpa—the 
πνευματικὸς TOVOS—as it was called, is by no means 
the same throughout. Where the tension is least, 
as in inorganic objects, stones, for example, minerals, 
pieces of earth, wood and so forth, the πνεῦμα 
appears as a kind of current (πνευματικόν τι) stream- 
ing from the centre to the extremities of the object 
and back again to the centre, with power to hold the 
thing together, but with no power to make it move. 
This, which is the lowest grade of πνεῦμα, though 
still, of course, a revelation of the Godhead, the 
Stoics called ἕξις or ‘‘cohesion,” because it possesses 
συνεκτικὴ δύναμις, by means of which it prevents the 
object from falling to pieces. We must not call it 
soul, but it is the substitute for soul in inorganic 
things. Next higher in the scale comes φύσις or 
“Nature,” which is so to speak the soul of plants, 
the word “ Nature” being used in a highly technical 
or scientific sense, with a play of course on φυτόν 
“plant.” Here the tension of the πνεῦμα is greater, 


156 The f1ymn of Cleanthes 


involving the power of movement, upward and 
downward movement at least, together with such 
other attributes or qualities as belong to the life of 
plants. It is not until we reach the third stage in 
the ascent that we meet with ψυχή or soul, which is 
the form in which the πνεῦμα reveals itself in the 
lower animals. Finally, when man is reached, we 
have rational soul or νοῦς, the form of πνεῦμα in 
which the tension is highest, for, as we have already 
seen, man’s vous is in a peculiar and distinctive sense 
a portion of God. 

Now in this ascending scale of existences I would 
have you particularly observe that each higher grade 
includes and embraces all the lower: minerals have 
ἕξις, plants ἕξις and φύσις: the lower animals ἕξις, 
φύσις and ψυχή: and man ἕξις, φύσις, ψυχή and 
νοῦς: so that there is a real solidarity or unity 
stretching ‘‘through all the mighty commonwealth of 
things,” not merely, as Wordsworth says, 


“Up from the creeping plant to sovereign man?” 


but from the lowest creations of even inorganic nature 
up to sovereign man: for God according to the 
Stoics is present even in the most ignoble forms of 
matter. In this way God is the true ἕνωσις τοῦ 
κόσμου, the “unity” or “unification of the world,” 
in the language of Cleanthes, the universal Word or 


Reason 
“that flows 
Through all, and in the light celestial glows 
Of stars both great and small”; 


' Excursion, ΤΥ. 


God the unification of extstences 157 


‘““even as ””—to quote again from Wordsworth, 


“fone essence of pervading light 
Shines in the brightest of ten thousand stars 
And the meek worm that feeds her lonely lamp 
Couch’d in the dewy grass?.” 


From the considerations which I have now 
placed before you, it will be evident to you all that 
the Stoics found a revelation of God in nature as 
well as in the heart of man. Anyone who wishes to 
follow out their treatment of this subject in detail 
cannot do better than read the de natura deorum of 
Cicero in Professor Mayor's edition—one of the 
most interesting and suggestive treatises on natural 
theology ever written. It would be a fascinating 
enquiry to trace the parallels between the Stoic and 
the early Christian conceptions of the divine imman- 
ence, more especially the Johannine interpretation of 
the Logos as the “timeless life, of which the tem- 
poral world is a manifestation’,” but on the present 
occasion | will rather call your attention to the way 
in which the Stoic deification of Nature reappears 
in certain types of modern half-religious and half- 
philosophical poetry, making mention, however, by 
the way, of what seems to me a really striking 

1 Prelude, Book xiv. See also especially Critolaus in von 
Arnim, Zc. 11. 459: τί δήποτ᾽ οὐχὶ καὶ THY τοῦ κόσμου φύσιν λεκτέον 
εἶναι μακραίωνα ““τὴν τάξιν τῶν ἀτάκτων, τὴν ἁρμονίαν τῶν ἀναρ- 
μόστων, τὴν συμφωνίαν τῶν ἀσυμφώνων, τὴν ἕνωσιν τῶν διεστηκότων, 
τὴν ξύλων μὲν καὶ λίθων ἕξιν, σπαρτῶν τε καὶ δένδρων φύσιν, 
ψυχὴν δὲ ζῴων ἁπάντων, ἀνθρώπων δὲ νοῦν καὶ λόγον, ἀρετὴν δὲ 
σπουδαίων τελειοτάτην ;” 


* Inge, Christian Mysticism, p. 46. 


158 The Hymn of Cleanthes 


example of the influence exerted by Stoicism on 
primitive Christian thought. In the fifth of the 
sayings of Jesus discovered in 1897 we read: “ Jesus 
saith, wherever there are [two], they are not without 
God, and wherever there is one alone, I say, I am 
with him. Razse the stone, and there thou shalt find 
me, cleave the wood and there am 7. It is impos- 
sible for anyone who is familiar with Stoicism to read 
this Logion without thinking at once of the Stoic 
conception of the omnipresent Logos, although in 
Christianity of course the Logos has become incar- 
nate in the person of Christ. I would venture also 
to suggest that the second of the five additional 
sayings discovered at Oxyrhynchus in 1903 cannot 
be fully understood, except in connexion with the 
Stoic doctrines which I have described. I will 
quote the Logion according to Professor Swete’s 
restoration, except in one passage, where 1 follow 
Grenfell and Hunt: “Jesus saith, who are those that 
draw you to the kingdom? The kingdom is in 
heaven. They that are upon the earth and the 
fowls of the air and every creature that is under the 
earth and in Hades and the fishes of the sea—these 
are they which draw you. And the kingdom of 
heaven is within you, and whoever shall know him- 
self shall find it. For if ye shall truly know your- 
selves, ye will also know’ that ye are sons of the 
almighty Father; and ye shall know that ye are 
within the city, and ye are the city.” Without 
pursuing the subject into details, it will suffice to say 


1 Reading καὶ εἰδήσετε ὅτι viol ἐστε ὑμεῖς τοῦ πατρός, etc. 


Dezfication of Nature 159 


that we have here, as it seems to me, an early 
Christian version of two great Stoic doctrines—the 
presence of God in every species of living creature 
throughout the world, pointing us to the Father divine 
from whom we also come, and the presence of God 
in a yet still more intimate sense within ourselves, so 
that to know ourselves is to know the Father and 
our relationship to Him. 

Premising that the indwelling, omnipresent, 
Deity of the Stoics is from one point of view 
identical with Nature’—and indeed they sometimes 
defined God and Nature in exactly the same terms’, 
let us now turn our attention for a little to the poetry 
of Wordsworth, in order that we may see how the 
doctrine of the Logos still lives in modern thought. 
I do not of course suggest that Wordsworth owes 
anything to Stoicism: happily this is one of those 
fundamental truths which religion and poetry and 
philosophy are always rediscovering and reinter- 
preting in every age. To Wordsworth, as to the 
Stoics, Nature is a soul or spirit®, and divine: 

“Ὁ Soul of Nature! that by laws divine 


Sustained and governed, still dost overflow 
With an impassioned life*!” 


1 The zatura naturans of scholastic philosophy. 

? See Zeno, Fr. 46, with Pearson’s note. 

51 do not mean to imply, of course, that Wordsworth’s 
Nature is a πνεῦμα in the full Stoic sense of the word. Pre- 
sumably he would have conceived of “Nature” as ἀσώματος, 
though (being a poet rather than a philosopher) he probably 
never reflected on the subject at all. 

* Prelude, Book x11. 


160 The Hymn of Cleanthes 


In more than one passage he represents Nature 
as an immanent indwelling soul, like the Stoic 
world-soul. 


“To every form of being is assigned 
An active Principle Ξ 
3 : : it subsists 
In all things, in all natures; in the stars 
Of azure heaven’, the unenduring clouds, 
In flower and tree, in every pebbly stone 
That paves the brooks, the stationary rocks, 
The moving waters and the invisible air. 


Spirit that knows no insulated spot, 
No charm, nor solitude; from link to link 
‘It circulates, the Soul of all the worlds?.” 


And also in the well-known passages from Lznes 
composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey and the 
description of the scenery of Switzerland, in the 
Prelude, Book vt’. 

The central idea in these extracts is suggestive 
of the Stoic Logos; but in the last-mentioned 
passage there is one line—‘“ the types and symbols 
of eternity "—that lifts us to a still higher level of 
idealism, recalling to the Platonist the world of 
invisible realities, whereof things seen and temporal 
are only types and shadows—aprtitura τῶν ἀληθινῶν. 
In the following passage of Browning’s Paracelsus 
we have a splendid elaboration on the theme of the 


1 Cleanthes’ line, μιγνύμενος μεγάλοις μικροῖς τε φάεσσιν. 

2 Excursion, Book Ix. 

* Quoted supra, The Divine Origin of the Soul, p. 48; Vitality 
of Platonism, p. 17. 


Presence of God in Nature 161 


presence of God in Nature, without anything that 
exceeds the range of Stoic thought: 


“The centre-fire heaves underneath the earth, 
And the earth changes like a human face; 
The molten ore bursts up among the rocks, 
Winds into the stone’s heart, outbranches bright 
In hidden mines, spots barren river-beds, 
Crumbles into fine sand where sunbeams bask— 
God joys therein. The wroth sea’s waves are edged 
With foam, white as the bitten lip of hate, 
When, in the solitary waste, strange groups 
Of young volcanos come up, cyclops-like, 
Staring together with their eyes on flame— 
God tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride. 
Then all is still; earth is a wintry clod: 
But spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes 
Over its breast to waken it, rare verdure 
Buds tenderly upon rough banks, between 
The withered tree-roots and the cracks of frost, 
Like a smile striving with a wrinkled face. 


Above, birds fly in merry flocks, the lark 

Soars up and up, shivering for very joy; 

Afar the ocean sleeps; white fishing gulls 

Flit where the strand is purple with its tribe 

Of nested limpets; savage creatures seek 

Their loves in woods and plain—and God renews 
His ancient rapture. Thus He dwells in all, 
From lifes minute beginnings, up at last 

To man—the consummation of this scheme 

Of being, the completion of this sphere of life’.” 


One of the consequences that follow from the 
Stoic doctrine of the Logos is that man and Nature 
are bound in the closest possible sympathy and 


1 Paracelsus. 


162 The FHlymn of Cleanthes 


union: ‘‘all things,” says Marcus Aurelius, ‘‘are 
intertwined with one another in a holy bond...... for 
they all make up one world, and one God, one 
essence stretches through all.” No poet dwells 


more frequently or fondly on this topic than Words- 
worth; and to him, as to the Stoics, the bond of 
union between nature and humanity is that the 
“something far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns” 
dwells also in “the mind of man.” And that is just 
the reason why in Wordsworth no one who is not a 
friend of man can hope to understand the voice of 
nature. 
“But this we from the mountains learn 

And this the valleys show ; 

That never will they deign to hold 

Communion where the heart is cold 

To human weal and woe’.” 

It is ‘‘the still sad music of Aumanzty that Nature 
sings,” 

“Not harsh nor grating, though of ample power 

To chasten and subdue.” 

Browning has more to say of man than of nature ; 
but he too recognizes the affinity between them, and 
bases it, like Wordsworth, on the presence of the 
divine in both: as you will see if you read Henry 
Jones’ book on Browning as a Relogious and Phato- 
sophical Teacher. 

It is time, however, to return to Cleanthes. We 
have seen that the Stoic doctrine of the Logos is not 


’ VII. 9. 2 Lines composed at Cora Linn. 


Godhead as harmoniser 163 


only an attempt to express the immanence of God in 
the world, but also represents the Godhead as the 
being who, in the words of Cudworth, reconciles 
“all the variety and contrariety of things in the 
universe into one most lovely and admirable har- 


19) 


mony’. 


“Nay, but thou knowest to make crooked straight, 
Chaos to thee is order, hatred love: 
Evil with good in one great harmony 
Accordant, interfused through all the world 
One universal, ever-living Word.” 


This conception also goes back to Heraclitus ; it 
is indeed, as Alois Patin has pointed out, the Alpha 
and Omega of his whole philosophy. We are in the 
habit, and rightly, of associating with the name of 
Heraclitus the doctrine of the never-ceasing flux of 
things—vravra pet. The world, in his view, is one 
gigantic battle-fleld of opposing forces for ever 
waging internecine warfare. “Thou shouldest know,” 
he says, “that war is universal’?”; “ everything 
happens by strife*” ; ‘“‘war is the father of all, and 
the king of 411. On this account he censures 
Homer for praying that strife might perish from 
among gods and men; for were there no strife, the 
universe would pass away’. 

But Heraclitus’ last word is not multiplicity 
and discord: it is unity and harmony. “ Having 
hearkened not unto me, but to the Logos, it is wise 
to confess that a// things are one.” Ina passage of 


1 Intellectual System of the Universe, p. 207. 
© ey * Fr. 46. * FY. 44. > Fr. 43 1. 


ἘΞ ὦ 


164 The Hymn of Cleanthes 


Philo the Jew we read as follows: ‘‘ That which is 
made up of both the opposites is one, and when this 
one is dissected, the opposites are brought to light. 
Is not this what the Greeks say their great and 
celebrated Heraclitus put in the forefront of his 
philosophy as its sum and substance, and boasted of 
as anew discovery'?” This then is the revelation of 
which Heraclitus believes himself to be the prophet. 
‘The hidden harmony,” he says, ‘is better than the 
visible.” It is just because men do not perceive 
this hidden harmony that they have gone astray. 
“They do not understand,” he says, “how that 
which is discordant is concordant with itself: as with 
the bow and the lyre, so with the world: it is the 
tension of opposing forces that makes the structure 
one®.” ‘Were there no higher and lower notes in 
music, there could be no harmony at all*.” The fact 
that opposites are always passing into one another 
shows, according to Heraclitus, that they are only 
two different sides of the same thing. “The living 
and the dead, the sleeping and the waking, the 
young and the old, are the same: for the latter when 
they have changed are the former, and the former 
when they have changed again are the latter*.” The 
gist of the whole matter is contained in the following 
fragment: ‘Join together that which is whole and 
that which is not whole, that which agrees and that ~ 
which disagrees, the concordant and the discordant: 


* Quoted by Patin, Heraklits Einheitslehre, p. 60. 
εἶν 3 a Ρ δι PR RS. 
+ IP. 43. 5 δε 8, 


The hidden harmony 165 


from all comes one and from one comes all” (ἐκ 
πάντων ἕν, καὶ ἐξ ἑνὸς πάντα). Now what is this 
One which is at the same time Many, this Many 
which is at the same time One? What is the Unity 
in which all opposites are harmonised? Heraclitus 
himself gives the answer quite plainly in two frag- 
ments, one of which I have already quoted. “It is 
God who is day and night, winter and summer, war 
and peace, satiety and hunger®.” And again: “To 
God all things are beautiful and good and right, but 
man believes that some things are wrong and others 
right®.” 

If we try to estimate the ethical and religious 
value of this great idea, which appears again and 
again, I need hardly say, in nearly every form of 
pantheistic thought, and has also left its mark on 
Christian theism, we must distinguish, I think, 
between physical evil on the one hand, and moral 
evil on the other. The practical rule of Heraclitean 
as of Stoic ethics is that we should follow the 
universal, conform to the divine Logos: δεῖ ἔπεσθαι 
τῷ €vva. And inasmuch as the Logos is a harmony 
that inevitably involves what from our finite and 
partial point of view we call discord, it may be 
rightly said that we conform to the universal, when 
we recognize that pain and evil are necessary and 
inevitable concomitants of good in human life: a 
state of mind that induces patience and resignation. 
“ They also serve who only stand and wait.” “11 is 
not good for men,” says Heraclitus, “to get all that 


1 FY. 59. ᾿Εν 26: * Pr. G1. 


166 Lhe fl1ymn of Cleanthes 


they desire. Sickness makes health pleasant and 
good, hunger satiety; weariness rest.” In the 
words of Robert Browning, a poet who frequently 
reminds us of Heraclitus, 

“Type needs antitype: 


As night needs day, as shine needs shade, so good 
Needs evil; how were pity understood 


29) 


Unless by pain’. 


But there is something more to be said than this. 
Greek philosophy—the philosophy of Heraclitus, of 
Plato, of the Stoics—holds with not less emphasis 
than Christianity—that there is something of the 
infinite in every human being; and from this point 
of view pain and suffering may be regarded as a 
means of educating the more divine and universal 
part of our nature. Suffering is in fact a γυμνάσιον 
or school in which we should learn to look at our 
individual lives from the higher standpoint, the 
standpoint of the infinite or whole; for “τὸ God all 
things are beautiful and good and right,” though men 
think otherwise. God, says Plato, created the part 
for the sake of the whole, and not the whole for the 
sake of the part®, an echo, it would almost seem, of 
the sentiment attributed to Heraclitus, that “God 
accomplishes all things with a view to the harmony 
of the whole*” It is a fundamental article of the 
Stoic creed that nothing can befall the individual— 
not sorrow, nor pain, nor death—which is not for the 
good of the whole. We must therefore study to 

1 LF. 104 > Francis Furin:. 
"CLAWS, 903 Ὁ, Wee δε; 


The infinite in the tndividual 167 


live in the universal, and not in the part, to em- 
brace in our regard, as Marcus Aurelius expresses it, 
‘all time and all being, and see that by the side of 
being, all individual things are but a grain of millet, 
by that of time as the turn of a screw.” Later 
Stoicism, in particular, is permeated by this idea. 
The ideal man, says Marcus Aurelius, is ‘‘ convinced 
that destiny is good; for his apportioned destiny 
sweeps man on with the vaster sweep of things*.” 

He “welcomes gladly all that in the web of 
destiny befalls him®.” “I am in harmony with all 
that is a part of thy harmony, great Universe. 
For me nothing is early and nothing late, that is 
in season for thee. All is fruit for me, which thy 
Seasons bear, O Nature! From thee, in thee, and 
unto thee are all things” (ἐκ σοῦ πάντα, ἐν σοὶ 
πάντα, εἰς σὲ πάντα). It is this constant effort to 
rise above the narrow individual standpoint and 
survey our individual life as part of the universal 
order—sudb specie aeternitatis as it were—that lends 
to Stoicism its peculiar moral dignity and eleva- 
tion: but we must beware of supposing that from 
the Stoic point of view our essential individuality 
would be obliterated or enslaved by the realisa- 
tion of such an ideal. On the contrary, the true 
self would be emancipated—emancipated from the 
tyranny of the lower and zmessentzal self, which is 
perpetually striving, by the gratification of the sensual 
and selfish impulses, to break loose from the whole 


1 x. 17, tr. Rendall. > III. 4, tr. Rendall. 
> Lbid. * Iv. 23, tr. Rendall. 


168 The Hymn of Cleanthes 


of which we are a part and become no more than 
‘a dismembered hand, or foot, or decapitated head, 
lying severed from the body to which it belonged’.” 
It is only in the service of the divine and universal 
law of virtue, according to the Stoics, that man 
attains his true individuality, his essential freedom : 
for what does freedom mean? Freedom to do what 
is right. This is the meaning of the Stoic paradox 
that only the wise man is free. Epictetus puts the 
whole matter in a nutshell, when he says “ Freedom 
is a name for virtue, slavery a name for vice*.” You 
will see that the Stoic conception of moral freedom 
is like the Christian, with the difference, of course, 
that the Logos whereby the Christian becomes free 
is the son of Man. ‘If the son shall make you 
free, ye shall be free indeed’®.” ‘For he that was 
called in the Lord, being a bondservant, is the 
Lord’s freedman: likewise he that was called, being 
free, is Christ's bondservant*.” In St Paul he alone 
is free who is the δοῦλος Χριστοῦ. Anyone who 
attempts to express the philosophical meaning of 
this article of Christian faith must inevitably do 
so in terms of Stoicism, as may be seen from the 
following extract from Principal Caird’s Funda- 
mental Ideas of Christianity: “It is the freedom 
and fulfilment of our spiritual being to breathe in 
the atmosphere of the universal life, to become the 
organ of the infinite reason. And the goal and 
perfection of our spiritual life would be reached, if 


1M. Aur. VIII. 34, tr. Rendall. 2 Pr 8) 
* St John viii. 36. * 1 Convgees, 


Essential freedom of man 169 


every movement of our mind, every pulsation of 
our intellectual and moral life were identified with 
it, so that in isolation from it we had no life we 
could call our own’.” There is nothing in this 
sentence that a Stoic might not have written. And 
to the Stoic not less than to the Christian, as I 
have already indicated, the road to spiritual freedom 
may sometimes be the vza dolorosa. 
‘““By many a stern and fiery blast 

The world’s rude furnace must thy blood refine, 

And many a gale of keenest woe be passed, 

Till every pulse beat true to airs divine®.” 

I stated above that, in endeavouring to esti- 
mate the value of the Stoic conception of the 
Logos as the unity in which all opposites are har- 
monised, it is important to draw a distinction between 
the evils which we call physical and these which we 
call moral. So far as physical evil is concerned, 
the solution which the Stoics offer, that pain and 
suffering are part of the divine dispensation and 
contribute to the universal harmony, though not 
perhaps entirely satisfactory to the intellect, is one 
that in nearly every age has powerfully appealed 
to the religious sentiment®. But when we proceed, 
as the Stoics sometimes do, to apply the same 

ἜΗΙ ae Des ee 
> Keble. Palgrave’s Treasury of Sacred Song, Ὁ. 215. 

3 There are, however, not a few traces of other solutions in 
Stoicism pointing to a kind of qualified dualism. We hear, for 
example, of δαιμόνια φαῦλα, of ἀνάγκη, of a certain weakness or 
deficiency in God (ἀσθένεια, ἔλλειψις) and so forth. See von 
Arnim, /¢. Il. 1171, 1174, 1178, 1183 al. 


170 The Hymn of Cleanthes 


solution to the existence of moral evil, neither the 
intellectual nor the religious part of our nature is 
likely to acquiesce. It is of little avail to assure us 
that moral evil fulfils a useful part in the economy 
of the whole: for without it there would be no such 
thing as moral good. Continence, for example, has 
a meaning only in relation to incontinence, justice to 
injustice, truth to falsehood and so on. ‘These and 
other such considerations were frequently brought 
forward by Chrysippus, who takes refuge, as usual, 
in a similitude. ‘Just as in comedies,” he says, 
“there are some ludicrous jests, which regarded in 
themselves are bad, but which nevertheless add a 
certain charm to the poem considered as a whole, 
so if you consider wickedness alone and by itself, 
it is deserving of censure: but wickedness is not 
without its use in the whole.” To which Marcus 
Aurelius very properly replies: “Take care that 
you do not become the cheap coarse jest of which 
Chrysippus speaks*.” The question as to the origin 
and place of moral evil in the universe is of course 
one of the greatest difficulties in every pantheistic 
Or monistic system, and it is interesting to notice 
that the solution attempted by Chrysippus appears 
continually in the history of pantheism. We may 
take Spinoza as an example. ‘“ Man,” according to 
Spinoza—I quote from Mr Picton’s Panthezsm*— 
“is in God, and of God. But what are we to say 
of bad men, the vile, the base, the liar, the mur- 
derer? Are they also in God and of God? Spinoza 


* yon Arnim, 1. 1181. * See VI. 42. > p. 69. 


Panthewstic view of evil 171 


does not blench. Yes, they are. But here comes 
in his doctrine of ‘adequate’ and ‘inadequate ideas.’ 
Thus, if you see the colour red, it completely ex- 
presses itself. It cannot be defined and needs no 
explanation. As it is in the Infinite Thought so 
it is in ours. We have an ‘adequate idea’ of it. 
But now if you see on an artist’s canvass a splotch 
of red and blue and yellow, part of a work only 
begun, it gives you no adequate idea. True, you 
have an adequate idea of each several colour, but 
not of their relations to the work conceived. To 
get that you would have to enter into the mind of 
the artist and see as he sees. Then the splotch of 
colour would take its place as part of a harmonious 
whole ; and would give you an adequate idea just 
as it does to the artist.” In this way, according 
to Spinoza, we must presume that if we could see 
things with the eye of Infinite Thought we should 
have an “adequate idea” as he calls it, that is to 
say, we should fully comprehend how moral evil 
promotes the universal harmony which he identifies 
with God. 

Such a solution, while it shelves the intellectual 
difficulty by administering as it were a sedative to 
the enquiring mind, leaves our moral sense unsatis- 
fied. We feel that virtue and vice are essentially 
antagonistic and irreconcilable: so that it is no real 
monism which looks on the Deity as the unification 
or harmony of the two, but only dualism in disguise, 
dualism masquerading under the mask of monism. 
Hence the Stoics felt themselves compelled upon 


172 The Flymn of Cleanthes 


occasion to cast about for a different solution. It 
is, of course, a favourite device of pantheism to cut 
the knot by denying the reality of moral evil alto- 
gether: evil is the negative of good, a “phantom 
that dissolves before the light.” The Stoics, how- 
ever, could not possibly take refuge in a view so 
entirely alien to the high moral earnestness which 
distinguishes their creed. Between virtue and vice, 
in Stoicism, the gulf is infinite: according to the 
strictest teaching of the school, indeed, moral good 
and moral evil are the only things that really count: 
all other things, riches and poverty, sickness and 
health, even life itself, are “indifferent.” The solu- 
tion which the Stoics tended to adopt is contained 
in the words of Cleanthes: God is the author of all 
things, ‘‘except what wicked men do through their 
own folly.” It is simply the popular doctrine of 
free-will and moral responsibility, the doctrine on 
which the institutions of civilised society are founded, 
praise and blame, reward and punishment, and so 
forth. In its theoretical expression it is as old as 
Homer, who in the Odyssey makes Zeus exclaim: 
“Men say that their evils are from us, but they 
themselves through their own infatuation, have 
sorrows beyond that which is ordained’.” These 
words were constantly in the mouth of Stoic 
teachers’, and Cleanthes is probably thinking of 
them here. The theory which they embody is 
doubtless of considerable practical value, but it is 
1 Od. 1. 32-34. 
* See the passages in von Arnim, II. 990 f. 


Freewill and predestination 173 


hardly consonant with theoretical monism; and it 
comes into direct and immediate conflict with the 
Stoic belief in predestination. If every effect, as 
the Stoics believed, is the result of an unalterable 
chain of causes, it is difficult to see how either 
the sinner or the saint can possibly be other than 
he is. This obvious and patent contradiction did 
not escape the notice of ancient critics of Stoicism; 
and desperate attempts were made to evade it. 
Those of you who are curious on this subject will 
find all the most important materials for studying 
the matter in von Arnim’s Stozcorum veterum frag- 
menta’. 1 will content myself with saying that 
although in the course of their discussions on the 
subject they succeeded in bringing to light some 
precepts of the highest ethical value, and anticipated 
nearly all the principal attempts of later philosophy 
to deal with the problem of free-will and predestin- 
ation on its speculative side, they were unable to 
invent a satisfactory intellectual solution of a pro- 
blem which philosophy, perhaps, will never solve. 
But to any one who pleaded predestination as an 
excuse for wrong-doing, the Stoic had his answer 
ready: if the sin was fore-ordained, so also was 
the punishment. We are told that Zeno was once 
whipping a slave for theft, and the slave—who may 
perhaps have overheard one of his master’s dispu- 
tations—protested: ‘‘It was fated for me to steal.” 
“Yes, and to be whipped,” said Zeno*. This is the 
Stoic counterpart of the old Aeschylean doctrine 


τ 11. 974 fi. > Apophthegmata of Zeno, 54, Pearson. 


174 The Hymn of Cleanthes 


that even if the responsibility rests with Fate, it is 
still the doer who must suffer. It is in vain that 
Clytemnestra, as she shrinks from the avenging 
sword, exclaims: 


“Not I, but Fate, is guilty of these sins.” 


The reply of Orestes leaves no loophole of escape : 
“This fatal doom then, it is Fate that sends?.” 


We have now considered the principal ideas 
contained in the second of the four divisions into 
which we have divided the hymn of Cleanthes. 
The two remaining sections will not detain us long. 
Cleanthes proceeds to describe how the wicked turn 
aside from the universal law, each pursuing his own 
individual good, and missing it, just because he does 
not seek it in the universal ; after which he prays for 
their illumination. 


a / + el oa ~ ΄ 5 
ὃν φεύγοντες ἐώσιν ὅσοι θνητῶν κακοί εἰσι, 
δύσμοροι, οἵτ᾽ ἀγαθῶν μὲν ἀεὶ κτῆσιν ποθέοντες 
οὔτ᾽ ἐσορῶσι θεοῦ κοινὸν νόμον οὔτε κλύουσιν, 
= , Ν - , 3 Ν ΜΝ 
ᾧ κεν πειθόμενοι σὺν νῷ βίον ἐσθλὸν ἔχοιεν. 
αὐτοὶ δ᾽ αὖθ᾽ ὁρμῶσιν ἄνοι κακὸν ἄλλος ἐπ᾽ ἄλλο, 
ε Ν ε X / Ἀ Ξ. 
ol μὲν ὑπὲρ δόξης σπουδὴν δυσέριστον ἔχοντες, 
ot δ᾽ ἐπὶ κερδοσύνας τετραμμένοι οὐδενὶ κόσμῳ, 
” 3 9 ω Ν ΄ ens 4 
ἄλλοι δ᾽ εἰς ἄνεσιν καὶ σώματος ἡδέα ἔργα. 
ἐπ᾿ ἄλλοτε δ᾽ ἄλλα φέρονται, 

4D 4, 4, 9 ’ “ / 

σπεύδοντες μάλα πάμπαν ἐναντία τῶνδε γενέσθαι. 
“One Word—whose voice alas! the wicked spurn ; 

Insatiate for the good their spirits yearn: 


Yet seeing see not, neither hearing hear 
God’s universal law, which those revere, 


Choephori, 909 f. 


Man oblivious of God 175 


By reason guided, happiness who win. 

The rest, unreasoning, diverse shapes of sin 
Self-prompted follow: for an idle name 

Vainly they wrestle in the lists of fame: 

Others inordinately riches woo, 

Or dissolute, the joys of flesh pursue. 

Now here, now there they wander, fruitless still, 
For ever seeking good and finding ill.” 


Here again there are reminiscences of Heraclitus. 
In one fragment, for example, we read: “The Logos 
is universal: but most men live as if they had a 
private intelligence of their own*” ; and in another: 
“They are at variance with that with which they 
live in most continual intercourse*®.” The general 
idea in this part of the hymn, if we read it in 
connexion with what precedes, is, as I have said 
already, that man alone is oblivious of his Maker: 
the rest of Nature, both inanimate and animate, 
obeys the law of God. For a Christian parallel 
we may perhaps compare the beautiful lines of 
Henry Vaughan from the poem entitled Cveatzon 
waiting for Revelation’. 
The prayer with which the hymn concludes 

begins with supplication, and ends in praise: 

ἀλλὰ Zed πάνδωρε, κελαινεφές, apyixepavve’, 

ἀνθρώπους «μὲν: ῥύου ἀπειροσύνης ἀπὸ λυγρῆς, 

ἣν σύ, πάτερ, σκέδασον ψυχῆς amo, δὸς δὲ κυρῆσαι 

γνώμης, ἡ πίσυνος σὺ δίκης μέτα πάντα κυβερνᾷς, 


1 Fr. 05. <P. 62, 
> Quoted supra, p. 148 f. 
4. ἀργικέραυνε : with reference to the αἰειζώοντα κεραυνόν of v. 10 


(see supra, p. 151). 


176 Lhe Flymn of Cleanthes 


ὄφρ᾽ ἂν τιμηθέντες ἀμειβώμεσθά σε τιμῇ. 

ὑμνοῦντες τὰ σὰ ἔργα διηνεκές, ὡς ἐπέοικε 

θνητὸν ἐόντ᾽, ἐπεὶ οὔτε βροτοῖς γέρας ἄλλο τι μεῖζον 

οὔτε θεοῖς, ἢ κοινὸν ἀεὶ νόμον ἐν δίκῃ ὑμνεῖν. 
“Zeus the all-bountiful, whom darkness shrouds, 

Whose lightning lightens in the thunder-clouds ; 

Thy children save from error’s deadly sway: 

Turn thou the darkness from their souls away: 

Vouchsafe that unto knowledge they attain ; 

For thou by knowledge art made strong to reign 

O’er all, and all things rulest nghteously. 

So by thee honoured, we will honour thee, 

Praising thy works continually with songs, 

As mortals should; nor higher meed belongs 

E’en to the gods, than justly to adore 

The universal law for evermore.” 


Side by side with these lines I will ask you to set 
two characteristic utterances of later Stoicism, one 
by Epictetus the slave, and one by his pupil Marcus 
Aurelius, the Emperor of Rome. The first is as 
follows: “I am a lame old man, and can do nothing 
else, but I can sing praise to God. If I were a 
nightingale, I should do the part of a nightingale, 
if a swan, I should act like a swan. As it is, I am 
a rational being: I must sing praise to God. This 
is my work: I do it, and will not desert my post, so 
long as I am permitted to remain; and I call upon 
you to join in this same song.” These are the 
words of the slave: hear now the words of the 
Emperor. “What then? Serenely you await the 
end, whether it be annihilation or change, And while 


a of. τῶ. 


Practical effect of Stoic ideas 177 


the hour yet tarries, what sufficeth? Reverence 
and bless the gods, do good to men, endure and 
refrain "—@eovs μὲν σέβειν καὶ εὐφημεῖν, ἀνθρώπους 
δὲ εὖ ποιεῖν, καὶ ἀνέχεσθαι αὐτῶν καὶ ἀπέχεσθαι". 


The object of these lectures, as I said at the 
beginning, has been to explain and illustrate the 
religious ideas of Stoicism. But there is another 
side from which the religion of Stoicism may be 
studied. Read the history of the early Roman 
Empire, and you will begin to realise the practical 
effect of these ideas in ennobling the lives of 
men and women, and keeping them faithful unto 
death. There are few more heroic figures in history 
than the Stoic martyrs of the time of Nero. The 
dying words of Arria, as she took the dagger from 
her breast and gave it to her husband, “‘ Paete, non 
dolet,” ‘‘Paetus, it does not hurt?’”—were not as 
lesser natures have sometimes insinuated, a histrionic 
exclamation: no one who realises what death means 
will fora moment cherish such an unworthy thought: 
they were the spontaneous utterance of a noble 
taught by Stoicism to triumph over pain and death. 
And Arria is typical of many of the noblest and 
gentlest spirits in the dark days of the Reign of 
Terror. But on the mass of the people Stoicism, 
it must be confessed, made but little impression. 
Many reasons might be alleged in explanation. 
Contrasting Christ with Socrates, Justin Martyr says : 


ἵν, 33, after Rendall. ? Pliny, .22. 11, 16. 
A. E. 12 


178 The Hymn of Cleanthes 


“Tn Christ—who was known in part by Socrates 
(for Christ was and is the Logos present in every 
man...) in Christ not philosophers alone and scholars 
believed, but also working men, the ignorant as well 
as the learned, and were taught by Him to despise 
glory and fear and death.” To much the same 
effect Origen*® says that Plato and the wise men of 
the Greeks catered only for those who are considered 
the better classes, and despised the masses: whereas 
the Jewish prophets and the disciples of Jesus try to 
provide the most wholesome spiritual food for the 
masses of mankind. 

Greek philosophy was far more in touch with 
ordinary uneducated human nature than modern 
philosophy is; but even Greek philosophy was 
never “popular.” Plato in one passage says pathe- 
tically : “1 do not expect that the majority of men will 
ever believe in the theory of Ideas”: and in another 
passage we have the significant words τοῖς δὲ πολλοῖς 
οὐδὲ διαλέγομαι. You may remember that even the 
more liberally-minded among the early Christian 
fathers sometimes asked the question, ‘‘ Did philo- 
sophy ever make the ordinary man live better?” 
But there are two reasons in particular why Stoicism 
failed to become a religion for the mass of mankind; 
and to these I will now draw your attention, both on 
other grounds, and also because, amid much Stoicism 
that resembles Christianity, they bring vividly before 
us some of the great and fundamental differences 
between Stoic philosophy and the Christian faith. 


1 Apol. 461 A, B, Migne. * Against Celsus, 1505 C ff., Migne. 


Immortality left an open question 179 


In the first place, the belief in immortality, which 
some writers have held to be essential to any religion 
that is to secure the adhesion of ordinary men, plays 
little or no part in Stoicism. It is true that, accord- 
ing to Cleanthes, all human souls survive till the 
universal conflagration that separates one aeon from 
another; but the Stoics were not unanimous on this 
point, and Chrysippus for his part believed only in 
a kind of conditional immortality: the souls of the 
good, he thought, endure till the conflagration, but 
those of the wicked perish sooner. Chrysippus 
appears to have made some attempt to differentiate 
between the condition of the wicked and the condi- 
tion of the good after death’; but in general we may 
say that the notion of a future life had no practical 
significance in earlier Stoicism. At a later period, 
when the austerity of Stoic teaching began to be 
tempered by Platonism, considerable stress was 
sometimes laid on the doctrine of purgatory and 
a place of reward hereafter. We have an illustra- 
tion of this tendency in the sixth book of Virgil's 
Aeneid’, and still more in Seneca, who in his escha- 
tology owes much to Plato. But the question of 
immortality was to the last an open one in Stoicism. 
Marcus Aurelius, for example, reserves his assent: 
death is either extinction or transmutation: and 
Epictetus would seem to have definitely disbelieved 
in the continuance of individuality beyond the grave. 
‘Shall I then no longer exist? You will not exist, 
but you will be something else, of which the world 

1 See von Arnim, /¢. 11. 812-814. 2 724-751. 


I2——2 


180 The Hymn of Cleanthes 


now has need; for you also came into existence not 
when you chose, but when the world had need of 
you.” 
The truth is that from the lofty standpoint of 
Stoicism the question of immortality is irrelevant 
or worse: virtue must be pursued for its own sake: 
it would cease to be virtue if inspired in any measure, 
however slight, by the hope of future bliss or the 
fear of future misery. We need not enquire whether 
Stoicism was right or wrong in such a view: all I 
wish to point out is that Stoicism offered no real 
satisfaction to the craving of the human heart for 
immortality, and for this reason, among others, could 
never become the universal religion of which its 
noblest prophets dreamed. Life and immortality 
had yet to be brought to light through the Gospel. 
And this leads us to the second of the two great 
reasons why Stoicism failed to penetrate the hearts 
and consciences of ordinary human beings. It lacks 
above all things the motive principle of personality. 
Ἔχεις λόγον, says Marcus Aurelius, τί οὖν οὐ χρᾷ; 
τούτου γὰρ τὸ ἑαυτοῦ ποιοῦντος τί ἄλλο θέλεις ; *‘ thou 
hast reason, why then not use it? If reason does its 
work, what else dost thou require??” We might 
imagine a Christian subject of the Emperor replying, 
“Yes, but we need some driving power to make 
the Logos in us do its work®. And this we find in 
Christ, the incarnation of the Logos, the God-man, 


23. 24, tr. Lone. Ἐν 15: 
* Cf. Lactantius, Divin. Just. ut. 27, “Sed nihil ponderis 
habent illa praecepta, quia sunt humana,” etc. 


Logos not personzfied by Stoics 181 


with whom we die to sin that we may rise to the 
life of virtue and holiness.” In other words, it is 
the doctrine of the zxcarnate Logos that constitutes 
the fundamental difference between Christianity 
and Stoicism. I have already said that the early 
Christian fathers spoke of Greek philosophy as a 
“preparation” for the Gospel. In the spirit of this 
remark, let us enquire, in conclusion, whether there 
is anything in Greek philosophy that can fairly be 
considered to pave the way for the words near the 
beginning of the fourth Gospel: “ the Logos became 
flesh, and dwelt among us” Ὁ 

The tendency of Greek philosophers to personify 
the ethical ideal is as old as Plato. The φιλόσοφος 
or lover of wisdom, whose ideal portrait he paints 
for us in the Republic’ and the Theaetetus’, is Plato’s 
conception of the perfect man; and we have already 
seen that the human in Plato, understood in its truest 
meaning, is also the divine. In each of these pic- 
tures, Plato has in view his master Socrates, not as 
he was in life, but idealised ; for Socrates no sooner 
died than he became to his followers an idea, an in- 
spiration, an ever-living example of how the righteous 
man should live and die. The same tendency is at 
work in Aristotle’s description of the μεγαλόψυχος or 
high-minded man, the embodiment of every virtue, 
as Aristotle understood the word; a kind of θεὸς ἐν 
ἀνθρώποις and entitled to the same kind of reverence 
and honour as the gods. In post-Aristotelian philo- 
sophy the personification of the moral standard 


475 B ff., 485 a ff. 4+ 392. D i. 


182 The Hymn of Cleanthes 


appears in the doctrine of the Wise Man, a doctrine 
the true significance of which is seldom understood, 
because superficial observers in antiquity, genial men 
of the world like Horace, or professional scoffers like 
Lucian, are always turning it into ridicule, and modern 
writers only too often follow in their wake. The 
Wise Man of Stoicism and Epicureanism is simply 
an attempt to give a kind of quasi-visible form and 
substance to their conception of the ultimate good. 
He is the σοφός, the man who has attazned: others 
at most are only φιλόσοφοι, on the road that leads 
to attainment. But, apart altogether from the ethical 
divergence of the two schools, there is a profound 
and essential contrast between them on the question 
whether the Perfect Man has ever actually appeared 
on earth. The Epicureans thought he had, and 
identified him with Epicurus. They even went 
further, and after their master’s death, if they did 
not actually deify him, they nevertheless spoke of 
him as a God, and found in a kind of positivist 
worship of Epicurus a certain satisfaction for those 
religious instincts, which neither the gods of Greece 
nor the phantoms of the Epicurean zuxtermundza 
could awaken or appease. It is more than a mere 
metaphor when Lucretius exclaims: “4 God was 
he, a God, who first discussed the way of life which 
now 15 called wisdom, and who by his skill rescued 
human life from such great waves and darkness and 
set it in so calm a haven and in a light so clear®” 

The Stoics took a different, and, in reality, perhaps 


- V. 8-1 Ze 


Stozc Wise Man not personzfied 183 


a truer view. The Good Man, in Stoicism, was 
always an ideal: neither Socrates nor Zeno, nor any 
other of them whom they sometimes named as types, 
was allowed to be more than an approximation. 
“(7 ξ enim wstum (sapientem) invenies, quem tot 
saeculis guaerimus?” ‘Where will you find the 
Wise Man we are looking for throughout the 
ages'?” And in Epictetus we read: “Let any of 
you show me a human soul ready to think as God 
does, and not to blame either God or man, ready 
not to be disappointed about anything, not to con- 
sider himself damaged by anything, not to be angry, 
not to be envious, not to be jealous; and why should 
I not say it direct ? desirous from a man to become 
a God, and in this poor mortal body thinking of his 
fellowship with Zeus. Show me the man. But you 
cannot®.” Now I will ask you to dismiss from your 
minds for a moment the gibes of Horace, and re- 
membering only the one essential doctrine of Stoic 
anthropology, that is, the unity of man’s spirit with 
the spirit of God, to consider what the Stoic ideal 
of the perfect man must necessarily be. He must 
needs be one whose soul is attuned to perfect and 
unbroken harmony with him “in whom we live and 
move and have our being,” one who, in the words of 
Epictetus, always ‘thinks as God does,” and is the 
embodiment of perfect zaxhood just because in him 
‘dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” ; for 
in Stoicism, as we have seen, man is most manlike 
when most like to God. The perfect man, said the 


1 Seneca, De Tranguillitate Animz, 7. 4. Ἀπ χε τὸ. 


184 The Flymn of Cleanthes 


Stoics, is divine, because God dwells in him: θείους 
εἶναι τοὺς σπουδαίους: ἔχειν yap ἐν ἑαυτοῖς οἱονεὶ 
θεόν". 

It is from this point of view that the personi- 
fication of the ethical ideal, as expressed in the Stoic 
doctrine of the σοφὸς or σπουδαῖος, appears in the 
light of a “preparation” for the Christian identi- 
fication of the Logos with Jesus Christ. To the 
pathetic cry of Seneca, “dz zstum inventes quem 
tot saeculis guaerimus ?” ‘where will you find him 
we look for through the ages?” the author of 
the fourth Gospel replies: ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ 
ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν. 

The Stoic doctrine of the Logos as God imma- 
nent in Nature and in man, was inherited by Philo, 
who under Platonic and possibly also Jewish influence 
distinguishes between the Logos and the supreme 
God, and so replaces pantheism by theism. At the 
same time he frequently describes the Logos in 
terms which, as Mr Purves remarks, “often bear 
striking resemblance to New Testament descriptions 
of Christ?” To quote a few among many such 
characterisations, the Logos, in Philo, is the Divine 
Word, the first-born son of God, the image of God, 
God's vice-gerent in the world, his prophet and 
interpreter, the high-priest who intercedes with God 
for the whole world, the intermediary between God 
and Man, himself neither God nor man, but partaking 
of the nature of both. Then came the great and de- 


* Diog. Laert. vil. 119. 
* Hastings, Dictionary of the Bible, s.v. Logos. 


Christian doctrine of incarnate Logos 185 


cisive step, for which, as I have tried to show you the 
teaching of post-Aristotelian philosophy, or rather of 
the whole of Greek philosophy from Plato onward, 
had prepared the way, by its ever-growing tendency 
to personify the ethical ideal. The link between 
Greek philosophy and Christianity was once for all 
established when St John proclaimed that the Logos 
had become incarnate in the founder of our faith. It 
has been truly said that “the doctrine of the Logos 
in the post-Apostolic age was the natural meeting- 
point of Christianity with the best elements in 
the old religions. It seemed to many to furnish 
proofs that the new religion was in reality the full 
expression of truths taught by philosophy’.” In his 
Christian Mysticism, Dr Inge, on the strength of a 
passage of Aurelius quoted in Eusebius, hazards the 
suggestion that “the Apostle, writing at Ephesus, 
refers deliberately in his prologue to the doctrine of 
the great Ephesian idealist?” Heraclitus, from whom, 
as we have seen, the doctrine in question is ulti- 
mately derived. We can never be sure of this: 
but without touching on the disputed question as 
to the immediate sources of the Johannine Logos, 
we may say with confidence that no one can read 
the first five verses of St John’s Gospel in the light 
of the great ideas I have placed before you without 
acquiring a newand deeper apprehension of the mean- 
ing of the words ἐγώ εἰμι τὸ φῶς TOV κόσμου, “1 am 
the light of the world.” “In the beginning was the 
Word...In him was life; and the life was the light 


* Purves, Zc. 2 p. 47N. 


186 The Hymn of Cleanthes 


of men. That was the true light, which lighteth 
every man’ —that is, I believe, every man, in every 
age and country, both before and after the incarna- 
tion of the Word—“ that cometh into the world’.” 
Before the birth of Christ men spoke of Jew and 
Gentile, barbarian and Greek. The “ Light of the 
World” has risen, and, well—we have changed our 
formula: we speak of Christian and heathen, Chris- 
tian and pagan. If ever we fully understand the 
message entrusted to St John, we shall rather say, 
with Justin Martyr: “ They that lived in company 
with Logos—pera héyov—are Christians, even if 
they were accounted atheists. And such among 
the Greeks, were Socrates and Heraclitus®.” It has 
often seemed to me that this famous sentence, which 
is sometimes treated as embodying an uncritical and 
merely sentimental opinion, indicates the road which 
Christian theology will in future follow, nay is even 
now, I think, beginning to follow. The comparative 
study of religion, which has never been so ardently 
pursued as in the present day, is revealing more and 
more the essential unity amid diversity of @// religion. 
We are gradually apprehending the truth which the 
poet expresses in the words: 


“Children of Men! the unseen Power, whose age 
For ever doth accompany mankind, 
Hath looked on no religion scornfully, 
That men did ever find. 


* The Authorised Version seems to me right here as against 
the Revised. 
* Apol. 397 C, Migne. 


Essential unity of all religion 187 


Which has not taught weak wills how much they can? 
Which has not fallen on the dry heart like rain? 
Which has not cried to sunk, self-weary man, 

Thou must be born again'!” 


I do not think it can be denied that the general 
tendency of thought is now in the direction of making 
the Christian religion prima center pares, rather than 
suz generis. ‘‘It is not the interest of the apologist 
for Christianity,” says one of the wisest of recent 
divines, “to sever it from all connexion with the 
religious thought and culture of the pre-Christian 
ages.’ ‘‘The argument” (for the divine origin of 
Christianity) “does not suffer, but only gains fresh 
force, if it can be shewn that the highest thought 
and life...of all the races and nations of the ancient 
world constituted a preparation for it, that the whole 
order of human history in the pre-Christian ages 
pointed to Christ, and that he was, in this sense, ‘the 
desire of all nations*.’” And if ever this tendency 
becomes predominant among Christian thinkers, the 
Johannine interpretation of the Logos-doctrine—the 
Johannine philosophy of religion, for such, in effect, 
it is—will furnish the Christian with a point of view 
from which religion and Christianity, Christianity 
and religion will still be seen to be the same—and 
in a deeper sense, perhaps, than ever. 

If we look upon Christ as the pre-existent, uni- 
versal and eternal Logos, in accordance with the 


+ M. Arnold, Progress. Cf. Justin Martyr, 396 a, Migne παρὰ 
πᾶσι σπέρματα ἀληθείας δοκεῖ εἶναι. 


531. Caird, Philosophy of Religion, p. 335. 


188 The Hymn of Cleanthes 


teaching of St John and Justin Martyr, it becomes 
true to say with Justin Martyr ὅσα οὖν παρὰ πᾶσι 
καλῶς εἴρηται, ἡμῶν τῶν Χριστιανῶν ἐστί"---“ all that 
has been well and truly said by thinkers in any age, 
is part of Christianity.” Perhaps it is in this way 
that history will one day justify—nay, is already 
justifying—the claim of Christianity to be in the 
profoundest meaning of the word a universal religion. 
We shall learn at last to recognise that it is the same 
God—<6 αὐτὸς Jeds*>—whom all men worship under 
diverse names—zodvaévupos, as Cleanthes says. We 
shall understand that it is really a picture of the 
Christian religion which Clement sets before us in 
a noble passage of his A7/zscellanzes*: “ The Father 
and Maker of all things is apprehended by all things 
through an innate faculty (ἐμφύτως) and without 
teaching, things inanimate sympathizing with the 
living creation. Of those who are alive, some are 
already immortal, working in the light of day (καθ᾽ 
ἡμέραν ἐργαζόμενα); and of those who still are 
mortal, some are in fear, being carried still within 
their mother’s womb; while others are guided by 
free and independent reason (αὐτεξουσίῳ λογισμῷῳ). 
We divide mankind into barbarians and Greeks ; 
but no race anywhere, either of tillers of the soil, 
or nomads, or those who dwell in cities, can live 
without an inherent faith in something higher than 
themselves. Wherefore every nation of the East, 
and every nation that touches the Western shores, 

1 Apol. 465 Cc, Migne. > Clem. Strom. VI. 5. 261 B, Migne. 

> Strom. V. 196 B ff. 


Universality of Christranrty 189 


the nations of the North and all who dwell towards 
the South, have one and the same innate conception 
(πρόληψιν) of Him who has established the Kingdom; 
for the most universal of his operations extend 
equally through all.” It is for this sublime, and 
as it appears to me truly Christian, conception that 
the hymn of Cleanthes prepares the way: and that 
is my justification for having asked an assembly of 
Christian teachers to consider for a little what it 
means. 


Books recommended in connexion with these lectures: 


Pearson, Fragments of Zeno and Cleanthes, London, 1891. 

Von Arnim, Stoscorum veterum fragmenta, Leipzig, 1905. 

Epictetus, translated by Long, London, 1887. 

Marcus Aurelius, translated by Rendall, London, 1898. 

E. Caird, Zhe Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers 
(Chapters on Stoicism), Glasgow, 1904. 

J. Caird, Zhe Fundamental Ideas of Christianity, Glasgow, 1899. 

Hoffding, Zhe Philosophy of Religion, tr. Meyer, London, 1906. 

J. Caird, Zhe Philosophy of Religion, London, 1904. 


V. ANCIENT GREEK VIEWS OF 
SUFFERING AND EVIL. 


Many of the Christian fathers—Justin Martyr, 
for example, and more especially Clement of 
Alexandria—were in the habit of describing Greek 
Philosophy as the preparation or propaedeutic— 
προπαρασκευή OF προπαιδεία---ἰογ Christianity. The 
great conception which runs through the writings of 
Clement in particular is that of a gradual education 
of the human race, culminating in the Christian 
revelation, when the λόγος or Word, which Greek 
thinkers had dimly apprehended by the light of 
reason, became flesh, and dwelt among men: 6 
λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν. This 
is not the place in which to discuss whether such 
an interpretation of Greek thought is adequate or 
not’, or whether it is really true that the Christian 
revelation is the crown and consummation of all 
religious development, and solves once and for 
ever the difficulties that perplexed Greek thinkers. 
The question whether Christianity provides a final 
and satisfactory intellectual solution of the mystery 
of existence will certainly force itself upon your 
minds, in the course of your enquiries into the 


* For such a discussion see supra, pp. 184 ff. 


Greek consciousness of evil ΙΟΙ 


Christian conception of suffering and its place in 
the divine economy. But this much, at least, I 
think we may safely affirm. A short examination 
of ancient Greek ideas about suffering and evil will 
form a suitable propaedeutic or introduction to the 
particular course of study which you are about to 
undertake; for it is the characteristic merit of 
Greek literature that it raises nearly all the really - 
fundamental questions which later moral and re- 
ligious philosophy has endeavoured to answer, and 
at the same time offers in a comparatively simple 
and intelligible form, many of the solutions at which 
subsequent thinkers have independently arrived. 
Lucidity is one of the special virtues of Greek 
writers. They understood what they wished to say, 
and said it with precision. 

Nowhere, perhaps, does one find a deeper or 
more all-pervading consciousness of the presence 
of evil in the world than among the Greeks. The 
usual view of the perpetual gaiety of the Greeks, as 
exemplified by the remark of the Egyptian priest 
to Solon, “ὦ Σόλων, Σόλων, Ἕλληνες det παῖδές 
ἐστε, γέρων δὲ Ἕλλην οὐκ ἔστιν," “O Solon, Solon, 
you Greeks are always children, and there is not a 
Greek that is old,” needs modification. The Greeks 
were not always children, in the sense of showing 
continually the gaiety and light-heartedness of little 
children. 

A multitude of passages in Greek literature 
might be quoted by way of illustration; but it 
will suffice to remind you of the proverbial saying, 


192 Suffering and Evil 


traceable in the last resort to Homer, to the effect 
that the immortals have dispensed to mortal men 
two evils for one good’. Pindar, Euripides, and 
many other authors are apt to dwell on the sadness 
of man’s lot, and even Plato, who is optimistic as 
a rule, thinks that the evils in life far outnumber 
the good things. Not that Greek literature as a 
whole can fairly be called pessimistic. On the con- 
trary, though pessimism predominates in Euripides, 
perhaps, one of its most characteristic notes is that 
of effort, aspiration, ceaseless struggle against ad- 
versity. It is just because the odds against him 
are so great that man has the opportunity to 
be a hero: that is a leading thought in Homer, 
Pindar, Sophocles and other Greek authors. The 
certainty of death becomes itself an inspiration to 
noble endeavour. ‘“ Forasmuch as we must die,” 
cries Pindar, “why should one sit idly in the dark, 
nursing an old age unknown to fame, without part 
or lot in noble deeds*?” ‘Work, for the night 
cometh,” is a constant theme in Greek literature. 
But, at the same time, a profound strain of melan- 
choly makes itself heard in nearly all the reflective 
passages of Greek writers; and frequently the view 
is expressed that the happiest lot is not to be born, 
and the next happiest, having once been born, to 
pass the gates of Hades as soon as possible. Solon 
is one of the most optimistic of Greek writers, but 
even he says “No one is happy, but all on whom 
the sun looks down are miserable*.” Hence the 


ἐν ΑΕ ΤΈΣ ΟΝ τ 2 Oh a. Be it τὴς 


Evil ascribed to Gods 193 


significance of the saying ‘Call no man happy till 
he dies.” Death is often represented as the only 
physician of life’s ills. 
ὦ θάνατε παιάν, μή μ᾽ ἀτιμάσῃς μολεῖν" 
μόνος «γὰρ» εἶ σὺ τῶν ἀνηκέστων κακῶν 
ἰατρός, ἄλγος δ᾽ οὐδὲν ἅπτεται νεκροῦ. 
“Ὁ healing Death! say me not nay, but come! 


Sole cure art thou of woes incurable; 
Sorrow lays not her hands upon the dead’.” 


What different explanations, then, do the Greeks 
suggest of the evil in human life? That is the 
question which in this lecture I will ask you to 
consider. 

<1. At first, before men began seriously to reflect 
on moral difficulties, the tendency was to ascribe 
evil as well as good directly to the gods. Zeus, in 
Homer, is the ταμίας ἀγαθῶν te κακῶν te—the 
steward of things evil and things good: in Pindar, 
Zeus τά τε καὶ τὰ véuer—Zeus giveth this and that, 
meaning good and evil. This is the ordinary, con- 
ventional, unreflective view, and as such appears in 
the bulk of non-philosophical Greek literature, some- 
times, as in the tragic poets, side by side with more 
refined suggestions, of which I will speak presently. 
We must remember, of course, that the Homeric 
Zeus is a morally composite being—part evil and 
part good—benevolence and malevolence combined 
in a single personality, a blend of naturalism and 


1 Aesch. Fr. 255, Nauck. See further on this subject, 
Butcher, Some Aspects of the Greek Genius: Essay on the 
Melancholy of the Greeks. 


A. E. 13 


194 Suffering and Evil 


idealism: so that it is natural enough for evil as 
well as good to be ascribed to him. But for the 
most part, when the Greeks attributed their mis- 
fortunes as well as their prosperity to the Gods, the 
moral dualism of the Godhead was not consciously 
present to their minds: all they meant was that 
everything we have, evil and good alike, is given us 
by the almighty powers on whom we depend in all 
the relations of life. The Gods, being as they are in 
Homer the sole and universal causes, are necessarily 
the cause of evil rather than of good. Inthe Homeric 
religion there is no devil to bear the blame. So 
much then for the first and simplest view, that evil 
as well as good comes from the Gods. 

2, Against this view that evil comes from the 
Gods we find a dramatic protest, as early as the 
time of Homer himself. “Do you know,” cries 
Zeus, revolving in his mind the fate of Aegisthus, 
“how vainly do mortal men blame the Gods! For 
of us they say comes evtl, whereas they even of 
themselves through their own infatuation (σφῇσιν 
ἀτασθαλίῃσιν) have sorrows beyond that which ἔς 
ordained’.” This is the earliest suggestion of the 
second theory of evil with which we meet in Greek 
literature, viz. that evil is the result of folly, wrong- 
doing or sin for which man is £zmself responsible. 

We are here reminded of the view expressed in 
the book of the Wisdom of Solomon: ‘God made 
not death; neither delighteth he when the living 
perish...but ungodly men by their hands and their 


* Od. τ. 33 ff. (after Butcher and Lang). 


Evil as punishment for sin 195 


1» 


words called death unto them’.” Cleanthes the Stoic 
was thinking of the Homeric line when he wrote 
the verses : 
“Ὁ King of Kings 

Through ceaseless ages, God, whose purpose brings 

To birth, whate’er on land or in the sea 

Is wrought, or in high heavens’ immensity, 

Save what the sinner works tnfatuate.” 


And throughout Greek tragedy this view that God 

is the cause of all except what wicked men do of 

their own free will, is repeatedly insisted upon, not 

so much by Sophocles as by Aeschylus, who almost 

invariably tries to represent suffering as due to sin. 
“For bursting into blossom, Insolence (ὕβρις) 


Its harvest-ear, Delusion, ripeneth 
And reaps a tearful fruit®.” 


But the theory that suffering always presupposes 
sin on the part of the sufferer himself, although it 
has the merit of simplicity, can hardly be said to 
square with facts, and many, if not most, of the 
objections to which it is liable are frequently urged 
in Greek literature. 

Thus in the frst place it is pointed out that in 
point of fact the wicked constantly enjoy prosperity, 
while adversity falls to. the lot of the righteous. 
“Many wicked men are rich,” says Solon, ‘and 
many virtuous men poor®.” We meet with similar 
complaints in Theognis, who, more than any other 
of the elegiac poets, is perplexed and troubled by 

1 3. 13 ff. See also Job iv. 7 ff. 

2 Pers. 823 f., tr. A. Swanwick. ° Fr. 15, Bergk. 


13—2 


196 Suffering and Evel 


the moral chaos of the universe. ‘‘ Dear Zeus,” he 
writes in one passage, “1 wonder at thee: thou 
art the lord of all; thou hast great power and 
honour, and knowest well the thoughts of each 
man’s heart. How then, son of Cronus, dost thou 
think fit to deal the same measure to sinful and 
to just alike, careless whether their hearts are 
turned to moderation or to insolence (ὕβρις) δ᾿ 
Elsewhere he expostulates with the Almighty for 
bestowing wealth’ and honour on the wicked, in 
language that reminds us of the words of Jeremiah: 
“Righteous art thou, O Lord,...yet would I reason 
he cause with thee: wherefore doth the way of the 
wicked prosper? Wherefore are all they at ease 
that deal very treacherously’?” Also it is often 
pointed out that the innocent in this life constantly 
suffer along with the guilty, and even in place of 
the guilty. Greek elegy and Pindar in particular, 
and most of the Greek writers who touch upon 
moral problems at all, recognise the indubitable 
fact that the sins of the fathers are visited upon 
their children. Thus, for example, Solon, while 
affirming that the guilty are generally punished in 
their own persons at the last, nevertheless adds: 
“If the guilty escape, and the doom ordained of 
Heaven fall not upon themselves, it will surely fall 
hereafter; the innocent will suffer for the guilty, 
their children, perhaps, or later generations’.” 
Theognis emphatically questions the justice of this 
* garg ff, * Jer. xu. 1, Cf Theos. 743 ff 
agg Ke, 


Suffering of the innocent 197 


arrangement: “When the children of an unjust 
father,” he exclaims, “follow after justice in thought 
and act, and dreading thy wrath, O son of Cronus, 
love righteousness from the first among their 
fellow-citizens, let them not pay for the transgres- 
sions of their sire! As it is,’ complains the poet, 
“the doer escapes, and another is punished’.” Here 
again we are reminded of the way in which the 
Hebrew prophets, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, fall foul 
of the doctrine that children are punished for the 
sins of their parents. ‘In those days,” writes 
Jeremiah, “they shall say no more, the fathers 
have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth 
are set on edge. But every one shall die for his 
own iniquity’.” Still the fact remains that the 
innocent do suffer for the guilty, and this is enough 
to show that the theory which imputes suffering 
invariably to sin does not represent the facts of 
the case. 

There is a further difficulty in the view which 
regards all suffering and calamity as only the punish- 
ment for sins committed by the sufferer himself. 
Granted that the sufferer has sinned, are we sure 
that he is himself responsible for his sins? In other 
words, is man a free agent, so far as virtue and vice 
are concerned ? Unless we are free to choose, is it 
just that we should be rewarded for our virtue, or 
punished for our sin? This is a question which is 
constantly raised by Greek thinkers. Popular Greek 
theology ascribed everything to the Gods, including 

A gaa ft. 3 Jer. xxxi. 29 f. Cf. Ezekiel xviii. 


198 Suffering and Evil 


the origin of sin. Thus in Homer, Até, Blindness 
or Infatuation, the Power that prompts to Evil, is 
“the daughter of Zeus. When Agamemnon realises 
at last his criminal folly, he exclaims: “ What could 
I do? It is God who accomplisheth all. Eldest 
daughter of Zeus is Até who blindeth all, a power 
of bane: delicate are her feet, for not upon earth 
she goeth, but walketh over the heads of men, 
making men to fall: and entangleth this one or 
that.” And to much the same effect we read in 
a fragment of Aeschylus “that God engenders guilt 
in mortal men, when he purposes utterly to destroy 
their house’®.” This fragment is quoted by Plato 
in the Republic 380 a, and gives him occasion for an 
emphatic protest against ascribing evil to the Gods, 
except as a chastening visitation for the good of the 
sufferer. 

It is a wide-spread notion throughout Greek 
literature that men are led astray into sin against 
their own free will by a daemon or divine spirit, 
which makes evil appear to them good, and good 
evil. Aeschylus speaks of an evil daemon or Alastor 
confounding men’s senses and hounding them on to 
ruin: and in his most powerful tragedies, dealing 
with the history of sin as it reveals itself in the 
successive generations of a crime-stained family, 
the inherited tendency to sin is personified as a 
kind of congenital daemon, taking vengeance for 
the sins of the fathers by driving the children into 
sin. ‘In the hearts of evil men,” he says, “sooner 


1 Al. i9..90 ff, tr. Myers: ? Fr. 156, Nauck. 


Men led astray by a daemon 199 


or later, when the appointed hour arrives, the old 
Insolence or Sin (ὕβρις) begets a young Insolence 
in the likeness of its progenitors, an avenging spirit 
or daemon, working in darkness, irresistible, un- 
conquerable, unholy recklessness (θράσος), bringing 
black destruction upon the house’.” This doctrine 
of a heaven-sent daemon or spirit leading men astray 
is obviously inconsistent with the theory of which 
I have been speaking, viz. that those who suffer 
have always sinned deliberately. An attempt is 
sometimes made to effect a kind of compromise be- 
tween the two views. Thus, for example, Aeschylus, 
as it would seem, endeavours to distinguish two 
moments or stages in the career of the sinner: one 
when he commits the first transgression, and the 
other when he persists in his wickedness. Aeschylus 
appears to hold that it is in the power of the indi- 
vidual to refrain from taking the initial step; but 
as soon as he has transgressed, infatuation follows 
from the Gods, and his doom is sealed. This is 
the meaning of the well-known line in which the 
ghost of Darius moralises on the Persian down- 
fall: ἀλλ᾽ ὅταν σπεύδῃ Tis αὐτός, yw θεὸς ξυνάπτεται: 
“when of our own free will we rush into sin, God 
himself becomes our ally*.” 

In the Old Testament, and in Aristotle’, we find 
parallels to this idea. In the Old Testament God 
is not the primary author of evil, but incites men 
to evil as a punishment for evil already committed‘; 

1 Ag. 760 ff. ® Pers. 744 Ὲ 5. Eth. Nic. Wi. 7 11144 19. 
4 See Adam, Religious Teachers of Greece, p. 147 f. 


200 Suffering and Evil 


Aristotle holds that a man had power to refrain 
from the original acts which produced a vicious 
career, and consequently he says: ‘True, you can- 
not alter your character now; but it was open to 
you at first not to become wicked, and you are 
therefore voluntarily wicked.” It cannot, of course, 
be argued that this is a satisfactory solution: for 
the real kernel of the difficulty lies in the conten- 
tion that the original acts which laid the foundation 
of the habit were themselves not free, but the result 
of circumstance, heredity and so forth. And, so far 
as the Greek poets are concerned, | have already 
said that they constantly attempt to represent even 
the initial impulse to sin as coming from the Gods. 
‘“‘Hybris, Insolence or Sin,” Theognis says, “15 the 
first and greatest evil; and God is its author’.” 

3. A third suggestion with which we frequently 
meet in Greek writers is that suffering is a discipline 
intended by Providence to educate and improve the 
sufferer. The ordinary Greek view was perhaps that 
affliction makes the character deteriorate, as is shewn 
by the use of such words as πονηρός and μοχθηρός, 
which passed from their original meanings, “painful” 
or ‘‘grievous,’ to a signification of moral depravity’. 

oe LE 

* [See however R. E. Macnaghten in ΟἿ. Rev. for 1907, p. 12, 
who attributes the degraded meaning of such words as πονηρός 
and μοχθηρός to an instinctive aversion to labour on the part of 
the Athenians. This ‘radical and permanent flaw” in the national 
character he regards as leading to the downfall of Athens. On 


this view toil would appear a calamity and would be as effective 
an agent of moral deterioration as sickness or other afflictions. | 


Suffering as a discipline 201 


This doctrine is expressed by Simonides*, when he 
declares that “ἃ man cannot but be bad, if hopeless 
calamity overtake him”—avépa δ᾽ οὐκ ἔστι μὴ ov 
κακὸν ἐμμέναι, ὃν ἀμάχανος συμφορὰ καθέλῃ. The 
first writer, on the other hand, in whom the view 
that suffering is an education appears to any extent 
is Aeschylus, whom we saw also to have been the 
first to insist repeatedly on the error of ascribing 
evil to the Gods. ‘We learn by suffering” (πάθος 
μάθος): “ Wisdom cometh by constraint? ’’—such is 
the language in which the poet expresses this idea, 
developing the old story παθὼν δέ τε νήπιος ἔγνω. 
“Tt is Zeus,” he says, ‘‘who guideth mortals on 
the road to wisdom, who hath appointed the sure 
ordinance—dy suffering thou shalt learn. In sleep 
the anguish of remembered suffering breaks out 
before the heart—and wisdom cometh to mortals 
in their own despite*.” You may remember that 
we have exactly the same sentiments in the Book 
of Job. “God speaketh once, yea twice, though 
man regardeth it not. In a dream, in a vision of 
the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in 
slumberings upon the bed; then he openeth the 
ears of men, and sealeth their instruction, that he 
may withdraw man from his purpose, and hide 
pride from man*.” It is highly characteristic that 
Aeschylus should ascribe the law of πάθος pafos— 
we learn by suffering—to Zeus, the God of all 
others whom he most reveres. The stern old 
. 2 ot ? Eum., 523 f. 
* Ag. 186 ff. gee se ἢ Ὁ 


202 Suffering and Evil 


principle of simple retribution, δράσαντι παθεῖν, 
“the doer must suffer’”—a principle on which he 
also insists with tremendous force—belongs appa- 
rently to the older dynasty of Gods who preceded 
Zeus: with Zeus a milder and humaner discipline 
begins. 

The dramas of Sophocles sometimes illustrate 
the doctrine that suffering is a divinely-appointed 
means of education. He is quite clear that there 
is such a thing as unmerited suffering in the world ; 
and he frequently represents such suffering in the 
light of a discipline. In the Oedipus at Colonus, 
Oedipus claims to have been taught by suffering 
and time. 

στέργειν yap αἱ πάθαι pe χὠ χρόνος ξυνὼν 

μακρὸς διδάσκει. 
He is no longer the old Oedipus of Thebes, for, 
as Sophocles says in one of his fragments, “ Much 
is revealed to the soul that is cradled in calamity”: 
πόλλ᾽ ἐν κακοῖσι θυμὸς εὐνηθεὶς ὁρᾷ". 

The same conception of suffering meets us also 
from time to time in Greek philosophy. Thus, for 
example, Plato, in the Repudlic, will not allow it 
to be said that God sends evil to mankind, unless 
by way of discipline, to improve and benefit the 
sufferer*. So also in respect of suffering hereafter, 
Plato almost invariably represents it as curative 
or remedial—the after-life is a kind of purgatory, 


gar i Me Bee m3 
* fr. 600, Nauck. See Adam, # 7. G., p. 172 f. 
= 380 B. 


Mystery of suffering 203 


though it is true that some incurable evil-doers are 
punished in order to serve as examples for the rest 
of mankind, as for instance the tyrant Ardiaeus’, 
and one of the numerous suggestions made by Stoic 
writers as to the significance of suffering was that it 
is a yupvdo.v—a kind of training-ground for the 
development of character. Here again, of course, 
we find plenty of parallels in the Old Testament and 
Apocrypha, for example in the Wisdom of Solomon: 
“And having borne a little chastening, they shall 
receive great good; because God made trial of them, 
and found them worthy of himself. As gold in the 
furnace he proved them, and as a whole burnt offering 
he accepted them’*.” But the Greek writers do not, 
of course, pretend that such a theory offers a full 
solution of the mystery of suffering; it is merely one 
suggestion among many, and open to almost as serious 
intellectual difficulties as the others. It has been 
argued that a Power at once omnipotent and omni- 
benevolent could have bestowed on mankind the 
ultimate good which suffering is supposed to bring, 
and yet have dispensed with the suffering; and, 
from the purely rational point of view, it is diff- 
cult to discover an effective reply to the argument. 
On this account many thinkers, feeling themselves 
bound to surrender either the omnipotence or omni- 
benevolence of the Deity, have maintained the 
existence of two independent principles or powers 
—the one responsible for all that there is of evil 
in the world, and the other for the good. This 


1 Rep. 615 ἃ 2 iii. 5. Cf. Job xxiii. ro. 


204 Suffering and Evil 


leads us to the fourth explanation of evil which 
appears in Greek literature, viz. 

4. That evil comes, not from the Godhead, but 
from some rival principle or power, coeval with the 
Deity, for the most part working against him, and 
in any case not yet, at least, completely subject to 
his control. In other words, the existence of evil 
is explained on the hypothesis of dualism. 

I have already said that we seldom, if ever, 
meet with this view in Greek poetry; but it occurs 
from time to time in Greek philosophy. At first, 
indeed, the philosophers endeavoured to explain the 
universe by postulating a single uncreated and im- 
perishable substance, water, it might be, or air or 
fire; but in course of time these two principles 
began to be recognised; and the tendency grows 
up to regard one of them as the cause of good, the 
other as the cause of evil. Empedocles derives 
the Universe from the four elements, Fire, Air, 
Water and Earth, together with the two efficient or 
moving causes Love and Hatred, the former of which 
combines the elements into things, while by the 
latter things are resolved again into the elements. 
He clearly looks upon Love as the beneficent, and 
Hatred as the maleficent power; and in the judg- 
ment of Aristotle, the conception at which he is 
really driving, though he fails to give it adequate 
expression, is that Love is the cause of good, and 
Hatred of evil; so that in a sense Empedocles was 
the first to recognise the Good and the Evil as two 
distinct and independent principles; for of course 


Dualhst view of evil 205 


that which causes good is the Good, and that which 
causes evil the Evil. Anaxagoras was a much more 
consistent and thorough-going dualist. He derives 
the world from the action of Mind or Reason, νοῦς, 
upon primeval chaos: all things, he says, were to- 
gether—opov πάντα χρήματα yv—then Reason came 
and formed them into a cosmos—eira νοῦς ἐλθὼν 
διεκόσμησεν. But he did not, so far as we know, 
ascribe the evil in the world to the one principle 
—I mean to pre-existent chaos—and the good to 
Reason, although the position which the world- 
forming vovs occupies in his system is analogous 
to that which later theology assigns to the Deity, 
even if, as is probable, he did not call νοῦς the 
Deity. Reason, in Anaxagoras, is uncreated and 
imperishable, at once omniscient and omnipotent, 
apparently a spiritual and not a corporeal essence, 
a power that, in virtue of its absolute freedom—it 
is, as he says, avroxparés—creates the cosmos. It 
is not until we come to Plato that we seem to find 
evil expressly attributed to a principle apparently 
coeval with, and clearly, I think, distinguished from 
the Good. In his Zzmaeus,!Plato declares that 
the World as we see it is a mixed creation—the 
product of Mind or Reason and Necessity.) The 
subject is one on which different views have been 
held, but to me it seems clear that Necessity, to 
which Plato attributes whatever there is of. evil in 
the world, is a personification of the origina] matter 
or chaos, out of which the Deity constructs the 
universe. In any case,j Plato makes it clear that 


206 Suffering and Evil 


the Creator had not quite a free hand. He con- 
stantly repeats that God, desiring all things to be 
beautiful and good, made them beautiful and good, 
as far as possible. The qualifying phrase “as far 
as possible” clearly implies the presence of some 
impediment, some power or principle extraneous to 
the Deity, which he cannot wholly overcome.! For 
the most part, Plato connects this rival principle with 
what is material and not with the spiritual./ Thus 
in the TZheaetetus he writes: ‘‘ Nay, Theodorus, 
evil can neither perish (for there must always be 
something opposed to the Good), nor yet can it be 
situated in heaven; but of mecessety—eé€ avayxys—it 
haunts our mortal nature and this present world’.” 
But, in a well-known passage of the Laws, he 
affirms that there is an evil world-soul as well as 
a good—two cosmic souls, the one beneficent, and 
the other maleficent, contending against each other 
throughout the whole domain of nature. This is per- 
haps the nearest parallel in Greek literature to the 
conception of a devil; only in Plato the evil world- 
soul would appear to be altogether independent of 
the good, so far as concerns its origin. 

The Stoic philosophers occasionally explain the 
presence of evil in a somewhat similar way, although, 
as we shall presently see, the most characteristic and 
consistent Stoic solution was of quite a different kind. 
Thus Chrysippus declared that there was a large ad- 
mixture of Necessity in the world—and Necessity, 
in Greek thought, is always something evil as op- 


Ἐπ δ as 


Simplicity of dualist theory 207 


posed to Nature, which is something good; while 
at other times he suggested that perhaps God is not 
omnipotent—ov πάντα δύναται; the divine nature is 
not altogether free from weakness (ἀσθένεια), and 
hence, along with the good things which he makes, 
a certain amount of evil is bound up fer seguellas 
guasdam necessartas, as Gellius says’, by a sort of 
necessary or inevitable law which the Deity himself 
cannot escape. 

This dualistic explanation of the origin of evil 
is of course the simplest; and it is worth our while 
to observe that it provides a solid foundation for 
morality. The notion is that God is the alto- 
gether beneficent power always at work in the 
world against the forces that make for evil; and 
it is further implied that man for his part is a 
composite creature, with an element of the divine 
in him, and at the same time with something of 
the Titanic or devilish—standing midway between 
mortality and immortality, ‘With th’ one hand 
touching heav’n, with th’ other earth*.” 

The duty of man ts thus to become a co-worker 
with God—avvepyos τῷ θεᾷ, as St Paul says—in 
the attempt to establish a kingdom of heaven both 
within himself and in the world*.“ To this thought 
Plato gives a characteristically religious expression 

1 Aul. Gell. WVoct. Att, vil. 1. 9. 

* See the lines of George Herbert, quoted supra, The Vitality 
of Platonism, p. 21. 

ὁ From the LZuthyphro we gather that piety is the art of 
serving God, 7 θεοῖς ὑπηρετική, for the promotion of a πάγκαλον 
ἔργον, namely wzrtue, 13 E. 


208 Suffering and Evil 


in a striking passage of the Laws, thus translated 
by Jowett: “For as we acknowledge the world to 
be full of many goods and also of evils, and of 
more evils than goods, there is, as we affirm, an 
immortal conflict going on among us, which requires 
marvellous watchfulness; and in that conflict the 
Gods and demigods are our allies”—€vppayor δὲ 
ἡμῖν Θεοί τε ἅμα καὶ Saiwoves—‘‘and we are their 
property’.” The guise under which humanity here 
presents itself is that of warfare—warfare as the 
condition of progress; and it is just the presence 
of evil which makes the warfare possible. In this 
way a dualistic theory of the world may afford a 
basis for morality. But, although Manicheanism— 
for such in effect this explanation of evil really is— 
may be satisfactory to the intellect, it somehow 
fails to satisfy man’s spiritual and emotional nature 
—we long for unity—and it sacrifices, of course, 
the omnipotence of the Godhead. On this account 
the most religious characters, especially those of a 
mystical tendency in ancient as well as in modern 
times, have seldom been able to acquiesce in such 
a theory; and it only remains for me to touch on 
the kind of solution which, though not, perhaps, 
intellectually invulnerable, has commended itself to 
not a few of the religious teachers of mankind. 

5. Ina certain line of the //zad the Gods are 
said to pledge one another in golden goblets as 
they look upon the battle of Greeks and Trojans 
round Troy*. On this line a scholiast writes the 


* go6 a. See also supra, p. 163. D as ee 


Suffering as part of uniersal harmony 209 


following note: ‘‘ Men say it is unseemly that the 
sight of wars should please the Gods. But it is not 
unseemly ; for noble deeds give pleasure. Leszdes, 
wars and battles appear terrible to us, but to God 
even these are not terrible. For God accomplishes 
all things with a view to the harmony of the 
whole, dispensing what 1s expedient thereunto, even 
as Fferaclitus says that to God all things are 
beautiful and good and right, but men consider 
some things wrong and others right.” The fifth 
theory of suffering and evil is contained in this ex- 
tract, and goes back, as you will see, to Heraclitus. 
Briefly stated, it is this. Man’s point of view is 
limited: he sees only a part. Hence to us the 
evil and suffering in the world appear a blot; but 
if we could see the whole, if we could attain to the 
universal point of view, the point from which God 
himself regards the universe, we should see that 
evil and suffering contribute to the universal har- 
mony. For this universal harmony results from 
the play of opposites: ‘‘as with the bow and the 
lyre,” says Heraclitus, “so with the world; it is the 
tension of opposing forces that makes the structure 
one.” “Opposition,” we are told, ‘‘is cooperation ” ; 
“the fairest harmony results from differences” ; “were 
there no higher and lower notes in music, there could 
be no harmony at all.” It is the same kind of view 
which Browning adumbrates in Francis Furinz’. 

Plato in antiquity occasionally gives expression 
to a similar view, as when he says that God created 

1 Her. ry. 61, Bywater. > Quoted supra, p. 166. 

A. E. 14 


210 Suffering and Kutt 


the part for the sake of the whole, and not the whole 
for the sake of the part—a sentiment that looks like 
an echo of the words of Heraclitus—‘ God accom- 
plishes all things with a view to the harmony of the 
whole.” Traces of this idea are perhaps to be 
found also in Aeschylus. It may be that the poet 
intends us to believe that the spirits of cursing in 
the Eumenides are, really, if we could only see it, 
spirits of blessing’. Sophocles, too, “seems to 
invite us to lift our eyes from the suffering of the 
individual to a consideration of the ulterior purpose 
which Providence is thereby seeking to fulfil... But 
it is not only the life of the individual that the poet 
thus regards. He seems to have extended his out- 
look to the whole movement of the human destiny, 
and to have seen therein the fulfilment of a single 
harmonious purpose, which is none other than the 
will of Zeus’.” 

But the Stoics were the chief representatives of 
this view in ancient times*. Man's true and essential 
individuality, according to this school, is realised 
in the service of that universal being which they 
identified with God; and, further, it is God who is 
himself the ultimate unity in whom all the opposition 
and variety of the Universe is reconciled‘. 

If, in conclusion, we try to estimate the ethical 


* See Verrall’s edition, p. Xxxv. 

* Adam, A. Ὁ ὦ. Pp. £73, 178. 

* See supra, Hymn of Cleanthes, pp. 166 ff. 

* See Hymn of Cleanthes, 1. 18 ff., and Keble’s lines quoted 
supra, p. 169. 


Problem of moral evil 211 


and religious value of this attempted explanation 
of the problem of suffering and evil—an explana- 
tion which appears again and again in nearly every 
form of pantheistic thought, and more especially in 
Spinoza—we must distinguish, I think, between 
physical evil on the one hand, and moral evil on 
the other. So far as physical evil is concerned, 
the suggestion that pain and suffering do in some 
mysterious way, if we could only see it, fulfil the 
divine purposes and contribute to the harmony of 
the whole, may not be satisfactory to the intellect— 
it seems, indeed, to shelve the intellectual difficulty 
altogether—but experience shows that it is a source 
of consolation and resignation to the sufferer. But 
the explanation of the existence of moral evil on 
the same theory does not satisfy either our intellect 
or our religious feeling. The Stoics indeed some- 
times maintain that moral evil is needed in the 
universe to give a meaning to moral good, because 
temperance, for instance, implies intemperance, 
justice injustice, truth falsehood and so forth’, but 
we feel that moral good and moral evil are funda- 
mentally opposed to one another: so that there can 
be no real harmony or unification of the two. 

These, then, would seem to be the principal 
views expressed in Greek literature on the subject 
of suffering and evil. Let me briefly sum up. At 
first, suffering is ascribed directly to the operation 
of the Gods; secondly, it is represented as due to 
sin; in the third place, it appears as a divinely 

1 See supra, Hymn of Cleanthes, pp. 169 ff. 


14---2 


212 Suffering and Evil 


ordained discipline for the improvement of the 
character; in the fourth place, a frankly dualistic 
explanation is attempted, evil, both physical and 
moral, being attributed to a malevolent, and good 
to a benevolent being; and finally, a few thinkers 
show a disposition to hold that the distinction 
between good and evil is one of merely human 
making, and that from the highest standpoint all is 
good. We cannot in this world see the true harmony 
of the universe, but among the Greeks there are 
many signs of a firm belief in its existence; and 
of the hope of a hereafter in which the mystery 
shall be solved, for 


‘‘Death is the veil which those who live call life ; 
They sleep and it is lifted’.” 


* Shelley, Prometheus Unbound. 


VI. 


THE MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL 
VALUE OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION. 


A former student of Classics at the University, 
who is now earning an honourable if somewhat 
scanty livelihood by teaching Greek and Latin 
somewhere in the provinces, once remarked to the 
writer of this essay, ἃ propos of the curriculum of 
classical study in Cambridge, “Cuz bono? When 
I die, I should like to have the words Cuz bono ? 
engraved upon my coffin.” The same inquiry, 
expressed perhaps with less playfully pathetic 
exaggeration, must occasionally be addressed to 
every teacher of the Classics. It is a question 
which ought not to be evaded, whether it comes 
from the advocate of some rival scheme of educa- 
tion, or from the dejected pupil vainly struggling 
to descry the wood among the trees. A variety of 
answers has often been returned’, and not without 
good reason, because the answer necessarily differs 


1 Several of them are discussed (and somewhat severely 
handled) by Professor Sidgwick in Farrar’s Essays on a Liberal 
Education, pp. 81—143. 


214 The Value of Classical Education 


according to the status of the questioner. It would 
be inappropriate, for example, to offer the same an- 
swer to a Senior Wrangler who is urging the rival 
claims of mathematics, to a boy who is learning 
Latin for the purposes of an apothecary, and to 
a classical student at Oxford or Cambridge. We 
are therefore at liberty to attempt a partial reply, 
addressed in the main to those who are familiar 
with the routine of classical study as it is pur- 
sued in the Universities. It is in these that 
classical education is carried to its highest pitch ; 
and consequently any theory of classical study at 
the Universities, if even approximately true, will 
be at once more fundamental and more final than 
one whose scope is limited to an earlier stage in 
the intellectual and moral training of the student. 
If classical education is to retain its hold upon the 
Universities,—and the recent development of other 
studies has but strengthened its position’,—it must 
be prepared to invite the student into more spacious 
and more fruitful fields of inquiry than can profit- 
ably be worked at school. The present Essay is 
only an attempt to sketch in outline what seems 


‘ The following passage from Mark Pattison’s #ssays (vol. 1., 
p. 440) will show that such a result might have been anticipated, 
if only—as we shall endeavour to show—the study of the classics 
is essentially a liberal education. ‘It is a well-established fact 
in the history of liberal education, that the periods in which the 
history and the practice of it have made the greatest improve- 
ment, have been periods immediately succeeding some of the 
great discoveries in science, or some of the great impulses to 
the study of facts.” 


Liberal and professtonal education 215 


to the author a true apology and theory of the 
place and proper function of classical study in a 
University. 

Let us begin by availing ourselves of a distinc- 
tion of long standing—a distinction at once popular 
and scientific—the distinction between what is 
called a liberal and what is called a professional 
education. The distinction was familiar to the 
ancients; in Plato’s day, the teachers of liberal 
education were the philosophers and dramatists and 
artists, whereas professional training was supplied 
by the sophists. 

Speaking generally, we may say that the primary 
object of a professional education, now as in an- 
tiquity, is not to develop the mental and moral 
qualities of the pupil for their own sakes, but to 
enable him to make his living—to convert, in other 
words, his brains into money. Training of this kind 
may or may not incidentally advance the liberal 
education of the learner, but in its essence it is 
altogether distinct from liberal education, because 
its end and aim are different. 

To give an exhaustive definition of liberal edu- 
cation lies beyond our present scope, but we will 
mention two points in which the man of liberal 
education—o πεπαιδευμένος, in the strict sense of 
the word aaideia—differs from the man whose 
education is otherwise. 

In the first place, liberal education implies the 
power of intellectual sympathy. The faculty of 
entering into another man’s thoughts, of appre- 


216 The Value of Classical Education 


ciating his point of view, and recognising the 
inherent necessity of his creed and conduct, be- 
longs only to the man who is liberally educated. 
In dealing with their fellow-men, others are tyrants 
and persecutors; he alone is tolerant. Nor is his 
intellectual sympathy confined to the circle in which 
he moves. He can enter into the thoughts and 
feelings which prevail or have prevailed in another 
nation and another age, and move among the 
mighty minds of every generation as if they were 
his kindred. Liberal education communicates this 
faculty of intellectual sympathy because, being 
itself rather the Form than the Matter of know- 
ledge, it enables us in dealing with the thoughts 
of others to make them our own by clothing 
them with the form which we already know. From 
this point of view liberal education is to every 
other kind of learning just what Logic is to the 
Sciences. 

In the second place, liberal education involves 
the training of the character no less than of the 
intellect. It aims at the περιαγωγή of the entire 
soul—yuyns περιαγωγή, ἐκ νυκτερινῆς τινος ἡμέρας 
εἰς ἀληθινὴν τοῦ ὄντος οὖσα ἐπάνοδος---ἃ spiritual 
revolution, in which the soul ascends from twilight 
to the noonday of reality’. True, the educator 
addresses himself to the intellect of his pupil first 
and foremost, but he does not desire, nor is it, from 
his point of view, even possible, to influence the 
intellect without affecting the will and character. 


* Plato, Rep. VII. 521 C. 


Characteristics of a liberal education 217 


He addresses himself in short, not to the intellect 
alone, but to the whole man through the intellect. 
His attitude may be described in the words of 
Plato*: ὁ δέ ye νῦν λόγος---σημαίνει ταύτην τὴν 
ἐνοῦσαν ἑκάστου δύναμιν ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ καὶ τὸ ὄργα- 
νον ᾧ καταμανθάνει ἕκαστος, οἷον εἰ ὄμμα μὴ δυνατὸν 
ἦν ἄλλως ἢ ξὺν ὅλῳ τῷ σώματι στρέφειν πρὸς τὸ 
φανὸν ἐκ τοῦ σκοτώδους, οὕτω ξὺν ὅλῃ τῇ ψυχῇ ἐκ 
τοῦ γιγνομένου περιακτέον εἶναι, ἕως ἂν εἰς τὸ ὃν 
καὶ τοῦ ὄντος τὸ φανότατον δυνατὴ γένηται ἀνα- 
σχέσθαι θεωμένη : “Our present reasoning indicates 
that this faculty” (meaning νοῦς or reason) ‘“‘dwelling 
in the soul of each individual, this organ wherewith 
each one learns, cannot be turned round from gazing 
on the false and fleeting, and rendered able to en- 
dure the contemplation of truth and the brightest 
part thereof, except by turning the whole soul 
round—even as if it were impossible to turn the 
bodily eye from darkness to light except by turning 
the whole body round along with it.” 

Confining ourselves then for the present to these 
two features of a liberal education—its power to 
produce intellectual sympathy, and its effect in 
moulding the character through the intellect—let 
us inquire whether the study of the Classics can 
justly be regarded as a liberal education, when 
judged by these two canons. 

What zs Classical Education? We may say 
briefly that it is the transportation of the mind 
into the ways of thought and feeling which pre- 

' Rep. Vil. 518 Ὁ“. 


218 The Value of Classical Education 


vailed in ancient Greece and Rome. This is a 
high ideal; but nothing short of this will do— 
nothing short of this has been aimed at by Hu- 
manists in every generation. Macaulay used to 
define a scholar as the man who could read his 
Plato with his feet upon the fender; but that is 
not enough. It was said of Dr Kennedy that 
when he took a class in Demosthenes he did not 
teach Demosthenes, he was Demosthenes. It is 
in the same sense that the true scholar always 
identifies himself with the author whom he reads. 
In proportion as he grasps the full meaning of the 
Greek, he transcends the limitations of time and 
place, and is carried back into the world wherein 
his author lived and moved. The soul of Homer, 
of Plato, of Sophocles, of Virgil passes into him ; 
he looks out with other eyes upon another world ; 
and the very music of their language seems to him 
the spontaneous utterance of thoughts that are not 
theirs, but his. Nor is it only in the reading of 
authors that such a transportation of the soul is 
necessary in order to derive the full benefit of a 
classical training. The writing of Greek and Latin 
prose and verse is truly valuable only in so far as 
it enables us to see with the eyes, hear with the 
ears, and think with the minds, of the ancients. 
No man ever wrote like Plato or like Cicero unless 
the spirit of ancient philosophy or oratory dwelt 
within him at the time. The same is true of the 
study of classical syntax and grammar. The Gram- 
marian is of little value to the Humanist if he does 


Aim of classical study 219 


not show him what particular habit of mind or 
feeling prompted the ancients to express them- 
selves in such and such a way. It has often been 
observed that language stands to thought as form 
does to matter. Now if there is one thing more 
characteristic of Greek civilisation than any other, 
whether we consider its religion, its philosophy, its 
art, or its politics, it is the intimate union which 
everywhere existed between matter and form. In 
dealing with the relation of language to thought, 
Plato expressed his consciousness of this union by 
describing language as the image (εἴδωλον) of 
thought, and thought as nothing but the inner 
language of the soul conversing with herself. This 
is the justification of that laborious study of words, 
and syntax, and idiom, which no serious student of 
the Classics can afford to neglect. We desire to 
recreate the world of Plato and Sophocles, to see 
what they saw, as they saw it, think what they 
thought, as they thought it; and in the wonderful 
language which they spoke, there is no shade of 
expression, however delicate, no particle, however 
trivial, in which there may not lurk a subtle force, 
to miss which is to fall short of apprehending the 
full significance of ancient life and thought. We 
need hardly add that History and Archzology lose 
half their charm and all their educational value 
unless they teach us how the ancients lived and 
felt. Modern historians sometimes forget that 
History is one of the Muses: the ancients seldom 
did. It is not every archeologist who can see, 


220 The Value of Classtcal Education 


like Keats, the whole soul of Greek antiquity in 
a Grecian urn: 
“QO Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede 
Of marble men and maidens overwrought, 
With forest branches and the trodden weed ; 
Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought 
As doth eternity! Cold Pastoral! 
When old age shall this generation waste, 
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe 
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st, 
Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all 
Ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know.” 

δεῖ δέ που τελευτᾶν τὴν μουσικὴν ἐς TA TOU καλοῦ 
. ἐρωτικά, says Plato’. If the love of beauty and 
truth is the ultimate goal of all education—and if 
the outward beauty of form and shape, whether 
it appeals to us through language or through 
sculpture, is but the expression of the spiritual 
loveliness within,—then our study of antiquity 
should be psychological. Classical study, in point 
of fact, so far as it is an educative discipline, is a 
department of Psychology, the crown of sciences, 
according to Professor Bain. 

We may take it then that education in the 
Classics involves, or should involve, the trans- 
portation of the mind into the sphere in which 
the ancients lived and thought and felt. 

It remains to ask, Does such a transportation fulfil 
the two conditions of liberal education which we have 
laid down? Does it promote intellectual sympathy ? 
Does it refine and strengthen the character ? 


' Rep. ll. 403 C. 


Stimulus of classical study 221 


Before describing his curriculum of education, 
Plato lays it down, in the seventh book of the 
Republic’, that whatever presents us with two 
opposite sensations at one and the same time is 
calculated to stimulate the intellect. By an exten- 
sion of this principle we may say that any department 
of study which continually presents us with ideas and 
emotions antagonistic to the age in which we live 
tends forcibly to awaken our intellectual activities 
and foster intellectual sympathy. 

Now this is precisely what the study of classical, 
and especially of Greek, antiquity preeminently does. 
The literatures of Greece and Rome are the only 
great and easily accessible literatures which remain 
to us before the foundation of Christianity and 
modern civilisation. In reading Greek and Latin 
authors, if only we read them intelligently, we 
stumble throughout almost every page upon some 
mode of expression, upon some idea, foreign to the 
fashion of to-day. The effect is, or should be, what 
Socrates described as an intellectual torpedo-shock, 
similar to that produced upon the body by contact 
with the torpedo or cramp-fish. You are stunned 
at first—or, as Plato might say, dazed, and ren- 
dered giddy, by the contradiction ; but the paralysis 
soon disappears, and your intellect begins to resolve 
the contradiction into a higher unity, involving a 
broader, more charitable, and for that reason more 
profound, conception of human nature and human 
life. ‘The main object,” says Mr Bowen, in Essays 
on a Liberal Education*,—“ the main object of seeing 


1 524 Ὁ. * p. 194. 


222 The Value of Classical Education 


distinctly what Plato and Cicero thought, is that one 
may be able to look on all questions, not only on 
the side which they now present, but on that also 
which they turned to observers long ago; to gain, 
as it were, a kind of intellectual parallax in contem- 
plating the problems of life*.” 

Let us give one or two examples of the kind 
of contradictions which we have in view. We shall 
not attempt to resolve them; to do so would be to 
stray into the deepest questions of philosophy, and 
it is an integral part of classical education that 
every one should sooner or later—later rather than 
sooner—devise a solution of hisown, The examples 
which we shall select are from Greece more often 
than from Rome. 

If one were to endeavour to express in a single 
word the fundamental difference between ancient 
and modern ways of thinking, one might say that 
the keynote of the former is synthesis, that of the 
latter analysis. The ancients delighted in wholes ; 
the moderns delight in resolving a whole into its 
component parts. It is only another way of ex- 
pressing the same essential difference to say that 
Greek antiquity was on the whole imaginative, 
while modern life is scientific in the main. Now 
the greatest whole which it is possible to conceive 
is the totality of things, composed of the ego and 
the non-ego, of internal and external nature, of the 
Individual and the World. As regards the relation 


’ See Tyrrell, Zatin Poetry, pp. 85, 96, as to the value of 
contrasts. 


Ancient and modern ways of thought 223 


between these two, the Greeks regarded Man and 
Nature as united in a far closer union than we 
do now. Nature was to them no step-mother, no 
tigress, ‘“‘red in tooth and claw,” no inhuman force 
to be fought against, but a mother, a beneficent 
power with whom we should cooperate against the 
forces that make for misery and sin. It was not, 
we may well believe, to pray to his goddess mother 
only that Achilles turned to the sea for comfort: 
αὐτὰρ ᾿Αχιλλεὺς 

δακρύσας ἑτάρων ἄφαρ ἕζετο νόσφι λιασθεὶς 

Biv’ ἐφ᾽ ἁλὸς πολιῆς, ὁρόων ἐπὶ οἴνοπα πόντον": 
the ἀνήριθμον γέλασμα of the infinite waters 
soothed and consoled his troubled heart. Nothing 
could illustrate more finely the Greek sentiment 
of kinship—if we may say so—with the sea than 
Simonides’ picture of Danae and her babe cast 
adrift upon the stormy waves. The words of 
Danae are full of peace and quiet faith: fear is 
the least of her emotions. Hear what she says, 
addressing her child: 

ἅλμαν δ᾽ ὕπερθεν τεᾶν κομᾶν βαθεῖαν 

παριόντος κύματος οὐκ ἀλέγεις, οὐδ᾽ ἀνέμων 


φθόγγον, πορφυρέαισιν 
κείμενος ἐν χλανίσιν, καλὸν πρόσωπον. 


κέλομαι δ᾽ εὗδε βρέφος, εὐδέτω δὲ πόντος, 
ε 7 7 
εὐδέτω δ᾽ ἄμετρον κακόν" 
μεταιβολία δέ τις φανείη, Ζεῦ πάτερ, ἐκ σέθεν. 
ὅττι δὲ θαρσαλέον ἔπος 

» , 7 4 / 2 

εὔχομαι νόσφιν δίκας, σύγγνωθί por’. 


1 Homer, 77. 1. 348—350. ? Simonides, 37. 


224 The Value of Classical Education 


“Sleep, my babe, and sleep, the sea!” The sym- 
pathy of human with external nature was never 
more touchingly expressed. And what shall we 
say of Earth, the Mother? The elder Pliny’, in 
one of the noblest passages in the whole range of 
Latin literature, has interpreted for us the ancient 
feeling of love and affection for the mother who 
feeds and sustains us during life, and recalls us to 
her arms at death: ‘‘ Seguztur terra, cut unt rerum 
naturae partium eximia propter merita cognomen 
indidimus maternae venerationts. Sic hominum tlla, 
ut caelum det, guae nos nascentes excipit, natos alit 
semelgue editos sustinet seniper, novisstme complexa 
gremio 1am a reliqua natura abdicatos, tum maxime 
ut mater opercens, nullo magis sacra merito guam 
guo nos guogue sacros facit, etzam monumenta 
ac titulos gerens nomengue prorogans nostrum et 
memoriam extendens contra brevitatem aevi, cutus 
numen ultimum tam nullis precamur trate grave, 
tanguam nesciamus hanc esse solam quae nunguam 
zvascatur honinrt. Aquae subcunt in imbres, riges- 
cunt in grandines, tumescunt in fluctus, praecepitantur 
2721 torrentes.: aer densatur nubibus, furit procellrs ; 
at haec bentgna, mttis, indulgens, ususque mortalium 
semper ancilla, quae coacta generat, guae sponte 
fundit, quos odores saporesque, guos sucos, guos 
tactus, qguos colores!” ‘Tum maxime ut mater 
opertens,” ‘then most of all Jike a mother covering 
us ---͵ἰο not these words remove Death's sting? ὁ δὲ 
μετὰ γήρως ἰὼν ἐπὶ τέλος κατὰ φύσιν ἀπονώτατος TOV 
' Hist. Nat. τὰ. 63. 


Greck feeling about death 225 


θανάτων καὶ μᾶλλον μεθ᾽ ἡδονῆς γιγνόμενος ἢ λύπης᾽.--- 
death in the course of nature is accompanied rather 
by pleasure than by pain. The wearied child returns 
to his mother’s arms at evening : 
Ἕσπερε, πάντα φέρεις, 
φέρεις div, φέρεις αἶγα, φέρεις ματέρι παῖδα", 

But such a picture of Death, beautiful as it is, 
was rare among the Greeks. We may welcome 
the God when he comes as the natural evening 
of a happy day; the miserable may pray for him 
to come “with healing in his wings,” as in the 
touching lines of Aeschylus’: 

ὦ θάνατε παιάν, μή μ᾽ ἀτιμάσῃς μολεῖν. 
μόνος γὰρ εἶ σὺ τῶν ἀνηκέστων κακῶν 
ἰατρός, ἄλγος δ᾽ οὐδὲν ἅπτεται νεκροῦ. 
But how seldom does Death delay his advent till 
the natural bourn! 
modo pueros, modo adulescentes in cursu a tergo insequens 
necopinantes adsecuta est*. 
Nor could the Hellenic joy of living always look 
forward with resignation even to the natural term of 
life. The well-known lines attributed to Moschus 
represent the usual Greek feeling about death: 
αἰαῖ ταὶ μαλάχαι μὲν ἐπὰν κατὰ κᾶπον ὄλωνται, 
ἠδὲ τὰ χλωρὰ σέλινα τό T εὐθαλὲς οὖλον ἄνηθον, 
ὕστερον αὖ ζώοντι καὶ εἰς ἔτος ἄλλο φύοντι-" 
ἄμμες δ᾽ οἱ μεγάλοι καὶ καρτεροὶ οἱ σοφοὶ ἄνδρες, 
ὁππότε πρᾶτα θάνωμες, ἀνάκοοι ἐν χθονὶ κοίλᾳ 
εὕδομες εὖ μάλα μακρὸν ἀτέρμονα νήγρετον ὕπνον. 

1 Plato, Zimaeus, 81 Ε. * Sappho, 95. ° Fr. 255, Nauck. 

4 ap. Cicero, Tusc. Disp. 1. 94. See also Tyrrell, Latin Poetry 
76 ff., 117, 159 ff. 

A. E. I5 


226 The Value of Classical Education 


The Greeks murmured at death because it seemed 
to involve a breach with the order of nature. The 
leaf dies, but the soul still lives, and clothes itself 
in another body in the spring; but man perishes, 
or if his soul survives in Hades, it is but a 
shadow in shadow-land, a prisoner sighing for 
freedom and the light of day. The dead Achilles 
was but the mouthpiece of Greek feeling when 
he said’: 


μὴ δή μοι θάνατόν ye παραύδα, φαίδιμ᾽ ᾿Οδυσσ εῦ. 
βουλοίμην κ᾿ ἐπάρουρος ἐὼν θητεύεμεν ἄλλῳ 
ἀνδρὶ παρ᾽ ἀκλήρῳ, ᾧ μὴ βίοτος πολὺς εἴη, 


x ” / > / 
ἢ πᾶσιν νεκύεσσι καταφθιμένοισιν ἀνάσσειν. 


But do not let us call the Greeks melancholy on 
this account ; it is easy to exaggerate what is called 
their melancholy. Their repugnance at death is 
the measure of their optimism and love of life. 
A Greek could hardly have written the exquisite 
lines of Keats, in the Ode to a Nightingale: 


‘“‘Darkling I listen; and for many a time 
I have been half in love with easeful Death, 
Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme, 
To take into the air my quiet breath; 
Now more than ever seems it rich to die, 


' It is interesting here to note how the theory of transmigra- 
tion (involving a return to life upon the earth, the soul clothing 
itself in a new body as the tree puts forth new leaves)—the form 
in which the doctrine of immortality impressed itself upon the 
deeper religious and philosophical feeling of the Greeks—implies 
a reconciliation with the order of Nature as seen in the life of 
plants. 

2 Od. x1. 488—4o91I. 


Nature detfied by Greeks 227 


To cease upon the midnight with no pain, 

While thou art pouring forth thy soul in ecstasy! 

Still would’st thou sing, and I have ears in vain, 

To thy high requiem become a sod.” 
ὦ Σόλων, Σόλων, Ἕλληνες ἀεὶ παῖδές ἐστε, γέρων 

é Ἕλλην οὐκ ἔστιν, said the Egyptian priest’. It 

was the eternal boyhood of the Greeks that made 
them shrink from death as something almost con- 
trary to Nature. 

Up to the present point, we have dealt with the 
Greek conception of Nature and natural forces as 
personified, perhaps, but not as deified. But to the 
common people and the philosophers alike, Nature 
was divine. The popular imagination peopled earth 
and sea and sky with multitudinous gods and god- 
desses, the personification of natural forces, but did 
not unify them in the conception of a single all- 
embracing Deity. Throughout Greek literature, on 
the other hand, or at all events in the best Greek 
literature which survives, there runs an undercurrent 
of monotheism, and the philosophers loved to repre- 
sent the totality of Nature’s forces as the one and 
only God. And as God is good, so likewise is 
Nature: ὁ δὲ θεὸς καὶ ἡ φύσις, says Aristotle’, 
οὐδὲν μάτην ποιοῦσιν. Evil is not natural, but un- 
natural: οὐδὲν τῶν παρὰ φύσιν καλόν᾿. It is the 
background of Necessity or Fate which throws into 
relief the smiling face of Nature*. And what the 

1 Plato, Zim. 22 B. 3 De Caclo, 273" 33: 

* Ax. Pols 1375" Gf. 

4 [bid. 1255>3. Cf. De Caelo, 286* το ἔκστασίς τίς ἐστιν ἐν τῇ 
γενέσει τὸ Tapa φύσιν τοῦ κατὰ φύσιν. 


15—2 


228 The Value of Classical Education 


Greeks believed of Nature as a whole, they be- 
lieved of Human Nature. Man’s nature is not 
corrupt, not fallen, not degraded: there is no such 
thing as “Original Sin”: there is no cleft between 
the human and the divine, no aching sense of sin, 
no need of a reconciliation with God: ἕν ἀνδρῶν, 
ἕν θεῶν γένος: ἐκ μιᾶς δὲ πνέομεν ματρὸς ἀμφότεροι". 
Or, as Heraclitus put it*: τί dai ot ἄνθρωποι ; θεοὶ 
θνητοί. τί dai ot θεοί; ἄνθρωποι ἀθάνατοι. The 
most genuinely Greek expression of the ethical 
end is ‘the life according to Nature”: the highest 
practical expression of Greek religion is—as it is 
well expressed by Zeller—‘‘to do to the glory 
of God that which is according to our own 
nature.” 

It is unnecessary to dwell at length upon the 
contrast between such views and those under whose 
influence we live. ταλαίπωρος ἐγὼ ἄνθρωπος, cries 
St Paul’, τίς pe ῥύσεται ἐκ τοῦ σώματος Tov θανά- 
του τούτου; We can hear the birth-cry of a new 
religion in these words. Nature and man have 
strayed from God: Christianity will lead them 
back. οἴδαμεν yap ὅτι πᾶσα ἡ κτίσις συστενάζει 
καὶ συνωδίνει ἄχρι τοῦ νῦν: but Θεὸς ἦν ἐν 
Χριστῷ κόσμον καταλλάσσων ἑαυτῷ. The con- 
trast between Paganism and Christianity could not 
be more strikingly expressed than in the words of 
St Paul® ἐνδημοῦντες ἐν TO σώματι ἐκδημοῦμεν ἀπὸ 

* Pind. (Vem. Vi. I. * fr. 67, Bywater. 

2. Rom. vii. 24. * Rom. viii. 22. 

ee ον γ᾿ 50. €-2 Cor iwi. 


Contrast between Paganism and Christianity 229 


tov Κυρίου, or in those of St James’ ἡ φιλία τοῦ 
κόσμου ἔχθρα τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐστιν. Christianity looks 
for a city, not on earth, but in the heavens: ἡμῶν 
yap τὸ πολίτευμα ἐν οὐρανοῖς ὑπάρχει": a city wherein 
Justice dwells: καινοὺς δὲ οὐρανοὺς καὶ γῆν καινὴν... 
προδοκῶμεν, ἐν οἷς δικαιοσύνη κατοικεῖ. In order 
to become a citizen of this Ideal (ιἰγ---τὴν πόλιν 
τὴν ἁγίαν Ἱερουσαλὴμ καινὴν which the author of 
the. Revelation’ saw καταβαίνουσαν ἀπὸ Tov Θεοῦ 
EK TOU οὐρανοῦ, ἡτοιμασμένην ws νύμφην κεκοσμη- 
μένην τῷ ἀνδρὶ avtns—it is necessary to enslave 
the body and make free the soul: ἀλλ᾽ ὑπωπιάζω 
μου τὸ σῶμα, says St Paul’, καὶ δουλαγωγώ, μήπως 
—avTos ἀδόκιμος γένωμαι. What a contrast to 
the Hellenic attitude is here! μὴ Onoavpilere ὑμῖν 
θησαυροὺς ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς...θησαυρίζετε δὲ ὑμῖν θη- 
σαυροὺς ἐν οὐρανῷ. What meaning would this 
sublime exhortation have conveyed to an ordinary 
Athenian in the time of Pericles? The Hellenic 
vista— 

ὑγιαίνειν μὲν ἄριστον ἀνδρὶ θνητῷ, 

δεύτερον δὲ φυὰν καλὸν γενέσθαι, 

τὸ τρίτον δὲ πλουτεῖν ἀδόλως, 

καὶ τὸ τέταρτον ἡβᾶν μετὰ τῶν pirwv’,— 
ends where the full fruition of the Christian begins 
—at death. The correct appreciation of this funda- 
mental contrast is one of the most potent factors 


1 Iv. 4. 2 Phil. i. 20. 
* 2 Pet. δ ἀπ * skis. 
SS (ΣᾺ 6 St Matt. vi. τὸ. 


7 Ath. xv. 694 6: cf. Plato, Gorg. 451 E. 


230 The Value of Classical Education 


which can be conceived in the promotion of intel- 
lectual life and sympathy’. 

Let us take another illustration from the sphere of 
man’s duty to his fellows. The traditional morality 
of Greece laid it down as a rule of conduct to do 
good to friends, and evil to foes. We except for 
the present the protests raised by Plato and one or 
two others’ against this precept of Greek morality ; 
in this, as in many other matters, Plato’s teaching 
is the morning twilight of a brighter day. Solon? 
prays that he may be “sweet to friends, and bitter 
to foes”: Pindar‘ is fain “to love a friend,” but ποτὶ 
ἐχθρὸν ar’ ἐχθρὸς ἐὼν λύκοιο δίκην ὑποθεύσομαι, ἀλλ᾽ 
ἄλλοτε πατέων ὁδοῖς σκολιαῖς : and Socrates, in the 
Memorabilia’, represents this principle as the pre- 
vailing morality of Greece. Set against this the 


* It is of course easy to find in Socrates, Plato, and Euripides, 
and sporadically elsewhere, anticipations of the Pauline doctrine 
of Man and Nature. The movement that began with Socrates— 
in so far as any great movement can be said to have a beginning 
—prepared the way for the new era. But even in Pilato the 
contrast is conspicuous. The μελέτη θανάτου, for example, of 
the Phaedo is less of a religious than an intellectual aspiration. 
Plato’s ‘“‘study of death” is inspired by the consciousness of 
ignorance, and the desire of knowledge, St Paul’s by the sense 
of sin and the desire of holiness. With Plato the moral exalta- 
tion was a result of the intellectual; with St Paul it was the 
primary and immediate aim. 

> Pittacus, according to Diog. Laert. 1. 4. 78, said φίλον μὴ 
λέγειν κακῶς, ἀλλὰ μηδὲ ἐχθρόν. Plato’s protest is contained in 
Rep. τ. 335 B foll., in the Gorgias, and elsewhere. 

* #7. τὰς ὦ Bergk. * Pyth. u. 83 Ff. 

PE 5. κ᾿. 


Pagan and Christian morality 234 


Sermon on the Mount: ἀγαπᾶτε τοὺς ἐχθροὺς 
ὑμῶν, καλῶς ποιεῖτε τοῖς μισοῦσιν ὑμᾶς, εὐλογεῖτε 
τοὺς καταρωμένους ὑμῖν, καὶ προσεύχεσθε ὑπὲρ τῶν 
ἐπηρεαζόντων ὑμᾶς": or compare it with the picture 
of Christian ethics in St Paul*: εὐλογεῖτε τοὺς διώ- 
Kov7as ὑμᾶς" εὐλογεῖτε, καὶ μὴ καταρᾶσθε: χαίρειν 
μετὰ χαιρόντων, καὶ κλαΐειν μετὰ κλαιόντων...ἐὰν οὖν 
πεινᾷ ὁ ἐχθρός σου, ψώμιζε αὐτόν: ἐὰν διψᾷ, πότιζε 
αὐτόν: τοῦτο γὰρ ποιῶν ἄνθρακας πυρὸς σωρεύσεις 
ἐπὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν αὐτοῦ. μὴ νικῶ ὑπὸ τοῦ κακοῦ, 
ἀλλὰ νίκα ἐν τῷ ἀγαθῷ τὸ κακόν. No contrast 
could be more emphatic or significant. It is im- 
possible to realise the contradiction at all without 
receiving an intellectual stimulus: it is impossible 
fully to appreciate its meaning without a quickening 
of intellectual sympathy. 

The examples which we have selected belong to 
the sphere of religion and ethics, but it would be 
easy to find instances in which the study of Greek 
antiquity in its psychology, its political theory and 
practice, its literature, its art, presents us with sug- 
gestive and stimulating contrasts to modern fashions 
and beliefs. In their psychological attitude, for ex- 
ample, the Greeks, true to their unifying instinct, 
recoiled from the habit of analysing the human 
mind with which we are familiar in the present 
day. Intellect, Will, and Emotion were often uni- 
fied by the Greeks in Intellect. As a result of 
this unification, morality, which we now regard as, 


1 St Luke vi. 27. 
? Rom. xil. g—21, esp. vv. 14, 15, 20, 21. 


232 The Value of Classecal Educatzon 


primarily at all events, a condition of the will, was 
apt to be identified with an intellectual state. An 
inevitable consequence of this was the exaltation 
of the rational or intellectual side of human life 
over the emotional and moral. In modern Teutonic 
races the tendency is the other way. We need not 
dwell upon the striking differences between the 
political ideals and institutions of the ancients and 
our own. Their conception of the City State with 
all that it involved, and, in particular, the influence 
of this ideal in determining the relation between 
the individual and the State, these, and many other 
less fundamental contrasts, readily suggest them- 
selves. Nor is it otherwise with ancient literature 
and art. It would be an excellent educative dis- 
cipline to institute a comparison between the 
Classical and Romantic drama, or between Greek 
and English lyric poetry, or between ancient and 
modern ways of writing history. The study of 
ancient art and archaeology is not a liberal educa- 
tion unless it is pursued with the ulterior object 
of apprehending the spirit of Antiquity in its like- 
ness and unlikeness to that of Christendom. The 
Parthenon should be interpreted by—shall we say ?— 
Lincoln Cathedral: Niobe weeping for her children 
by the Pieta of Michael Angelo. 

Enough has been said to indicate generally the 
way in which the study of classical literature and 
life fulfils the first requisite of a liberal education 
by creating and fostering the spirit of intellectual 
sympathy. It remains for us to show how the 


Discipline of classical study 244 


discipline of ancient civilisation should mould and 
fashion the character. 

To analyse the ideal man—the true likeness 
of Humanity, τὸ ἀνδρείκελον, ὃ δὴ Kai Ὅμηρος 
ἐκάλεσεν ἐν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις ἐγγιγνόμενον θεοειδές 
τε καὶ Geoeixehov'—is πλέον ἢ κατὰ τὴν παροῦσαν 
ὁρμήν": but we can all recognise two elements of 
character, the blending of which in due proportion 
is as rare as it is splendid. The one we call by 
such names as steadiness, strength, sobriety, self- 
control, the habit of obeying law; the other is called 
intellectual acuteness, originality, independence of 
mind, the capacity of making law. These are the 
two great factors which unite to form the characters 
of us all. Among Englishmen it is perhaps the 
steady element which predominates. This element 
is magnificent in action, after it has been told what 
to do, but, when confronted with an idea, it is apt 
to yawn, or to look at its watch, being, to put 
it somewhat bluntly, in the judgment at least of 
Frenchmen, a trifle stupid. In its noblest forms 
this virtue of character will make a school-boy lead 
a forlorn hope upon the battlefield, and meet a 
glorious death with the cry of /Vloreat Etona still 
ringing on his lips. In its degenerate forms it 
causes men to prize the body above the soul, and 
“esteem gymnastic more than music’*.” 

The second factor in character, that which we 
have called originality, is less plentiful in the 

1 Plato, Aep. VI. 501 B. ? Ibid. 506 E. 

* Plato, Rep. vill. 548 C. 


RE, 


234 The Value of Classical Education 


majority of men. It is often found in inverse 
proportion to the element of steadiness, and that 
is why genius—so we are wont to say—is often 
erratic and unstable. It is in virtue of this element 
that discoveries are made, and the limits of human 
knowledge extended; it is this that is the parent 
of the highest flights of poetry; it is this that 
founds religions and sways mankind, as the moon 
regulates the tides, with the magic force of an 
idea. But in its degraded forms, and when it is 
wrongly educated, it sinks into petty sophistry, 
makes havoc of great names, and convinces itself 
and others that the worse cause is the better, and 
so becomes a curse to the society wherein it appears. 
Corruptio optim pessima. 

φιλοσοφεῖν ἄνευ parakias—this is indeed the 
end. In the Polztzcus' Plato wished to secure the 
presence of these two sides of character in children 
by intermarriages between men and women in whom 
the opposing elements predominated. It is wholly 
in the spirit of Plato’s teaching to regard the ideal 
character as itself the product of the spiritual union 
of these two elements within the soul; and it is such 
a spiritual union that every attempt to educate the 
character should endeavour to effect. 

We have still to show that the study of classical 
antiquity tends to cherish and to unify these two 
sides of the ideal man. 

To know a thing, in the fullest sense of the 
term, is to become like the thing we know. Know- 


1 σχὸ, 


Es 


Genius of Greece and Rome 235 


ledge is the assimilation of subject and object. This 
is the teaching of Christianity and Platonism alike: 
the one tells us that to know God is to be assimi- 
lated to His glorious image, the other that the 
knowledge of the Idea of Good or God, which is 
the ultimate end, involves ὁμοίωσις θεῷ κατὰ τὸ 
δυνατόν. To know the best and highest in Greece 
and Rome is therefore to make the virtues of an- 
tiquity our own. For the purpose of educating the 
character by means of classical study, whatever is 
not best in ancient life and thought should, in the 
first instance at least, be ignored. 

What then is the best of Greece, what is the 
best of Rome? To put the matter briefly, the 


genius of Greece was speculative, that of Rome 


was practical. The desire of knowledge, scepticism 
in its true and noble sense of searching after truth, 
is the dowry of ancient Greece; strength and self- 
control, obedience and law belong to Rome. Full 
well did Virgil say: 

excudent alii spirantia mollius aera, 

credo equidem, vivos ducent de marmore voltus ; 

orabunt causas melius, caelique meatus 

describent radio, et surgentia sidera dicent: 

tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento ; 


hae tibi erunt artes, pacisque imponere morem, 
parcere subiectis, et debellare superbos?. 


Greece is in very truth the Mother of Ideas! 
How many seeds has she sown whose flowers and 
fruit delight and sustain us now! But the Greeks 


1 Theaet. 176 B. * Aeneid νι. 848—854. 


236 The Value of Classical Education 


were relatively weak in action, because they knew 
not how to combine, since it is of the essence of 
genius to be individual. They could not translate 
into practice the ideas which they created; this 
honour was reserved for Christianity and Rome. 
The lofty ideals of morality which the Greek 
philosophers constructed reappear in Christian 
ethics, intensified, it is true, and intertwined more 
closely with the affections and the will, but easy to 
recognise, and in this profoundly human form sway 
still more powerfully the hearts of men. καὶ ὁ 
λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο, Kal ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν. In 
Rome, thanks to the national virtues of courage, 
and patience, and submission to authority, the ideas 
of law and government enunciated by Greek thinkers 
were translated into action, losing, perhaps, some- 
what in the process, since practice is everywhere 
less perfect than theory, but keeping alive the sacred 
flame of civilisation, and spreading the fax Romana 
over the face of the Roman world. 

And now let us sum up. The study of classical 
literature and life is a liberal education because it 
enlarges our intellectual horizon, and promotes 
intellectual sympathy by the electric shock of con- 
tradiction and the activity thus set up. It is a 
liberal education, in the second place, because it 
moulds the will and character no less than the 
intellect. As the student learns more of Greek 
life and thought, he should become more inde- 
pendent and more manly, not driven to and fro 


1 St John 1. 14. 


Love of Truth and love of Law 237 


by every wind of doctrine, but honestly striving to 
think things out for himself, and building his faith 
on the sure ground of knowledge. In one word, 
he will love Zruth more. As his knowledge of 
the life and language of Rome advances, he will 
become more patient and more courageous, he will 
learn ‘“‘to scorn delights and live laborious days,” 
he will become more loyal to himself, his country, 
and his faith, and become both a better citizen 
and a better man. In one word, he will love 
Law more. 


The writer has spoken seriously, perhaps unduly 
so, upon this subject of classical study, because he 
feels that the issue is a great one: μέγας 6 ἀγών, 
μέγας, οὐχ ὅσος δοκεῖ. It seems to him a grave 
misfortune that any one should study classics with- 
out trying sooner or later to form some notion of 
what the study means. Every student and ex- 
ponent of antiquity should frame his theory for 
himself, otherwise its educational value is but little. 
The present essay is only a ὑπόμνημα τῷ ταὐτὸν 
ἴχνος μετιόντι. The beginner in classical study 
should be content at first to believe—det γὰρ πι- 
στεύειν τοὺς μανθάνοντας, as Aristotle remarks— 
that there zs a ‘‘beatific vision.” Such a faith will 
animate and inspire the daily routine, and make 
the meanest particle breathe and live. He will 
begin by studying the body, if we may say so, 


1 Plato, Phaedr. 276 D. 


238 The Value of Classical Education 


of Greek thought, the beautiful language which is 
but the outward expression of inward and more 
spiritual beauty: appovin yap ἀφανὴς φανερῆς κρείτ- 
των. From the contemplation of bodily beauty he 
will rise to that of spiritual, and the soul of an- 
tiquity will reveal herself to him in the thoughts 
of ancient poets and philosophers and men of 
science, in ancient laws and _ institutions, in the 
immortal creations of ancient art and architecture. 
He will then recognise in the words of Plato’ ὅτι 
πᾶν τὸ κάλλος αὐτὸ αὑτῷ Evyyeves ἐστιν, and “ facing 
the full Sea of Beauty and looking thereon, he will 
beget out of bountiful Philosophy many beautiful 
and lofty conceptions and thoughts.” The Sea of 
Beauty stretches wide, its waves unharvested as 
ever. We have merely stood upon the shore; he 
who scales the still snow citadels around it will see 
farther, but even he will not see all. 


“Nay, come up hither... 
Unto the furthest flood-brim look with me; 
Then reach on with thy thought till it be drown’d. 
Miles and miles distant though the last line be, 
And though thy soul sail leagues and leagues beyond, 
Still leagues beyond those leagues there is more sea.” 


' Symp. 210 C—D. 


INDEX 


Aeschylus 40 f., 109, 195, 198 f., 
201, 210 

Aether, doctrine of in Euripides 
47 f., 53 ff, 130 

Anaxagoras 42 ff, 53, 205 

Anaximenes 44 

Anthropomorphism 
morphism 124 ff. 

Aratus 19, 123 f. 

Aristotle 1, 11) 22, 41, 54, 63f, 
74, 118, 133 ἢ) 181, 199 f., 204, 
227, 237 

Assimilation of man to God 33f, 
64 ff., 75, 110, 235 


and __ theo- 


Beauty, Ideal 68 ff. 

Bias of Priene 85 f. 

Body as tomb of soul 55, 58, 127 

Boethius 26 

Brotherhood, universal 5, 142 ff. 

Browning, Robert 45, 160 f., 166, 
209 


Cambridge Platonists 3, 23, 67, 
70, 100, 163 

Christ as Logos 158, 180f., 187 f. 

Christianity: and pre-Christian 
religion 184 ff., 228 ff: and 
Stoicism 178 ff. 

Chrysippus 114, 170, 179, 206 

Cicero 140, 143, 146, 157, 222 

City of God 65, 229 

Classical education, value of 
213 ff.: as discipline of char- 
acter 233 ff. 


Cleanthes, Hymn of 20, 82, 104 ff., 
195: life of 113 ff. 

Clement of Alexandria 2 ἔ, 20, 
55, 91, 99, 112, 153, 188 f, 190 

Cohesion, Stoic 155 

Cosmopolitanism 143 ff. 


Dante 11, 51, 61 f., 70, 132 

Death, rehearsal of 65 ff., 230: 
Greek view of 225 ff. 

Dialectic, Plato’s 29 f., 72 ff. 

Diogenes of Apollonia 44 ff, 59, 
129 

Divinity of human soul 3, 35 ff, 
127 ff. 

Dualism, in disguise 171 f.: as 
explanation of evil 204: as 
basis for morality 208 


Education, Plato’s theory of 28 ff, 
70 ff.: liberal and professional 
215 ff. 

Empedocles 127, 204 

Epicharmus 53, 93 ff. 

Epictetus 122, 134, 136 ff, 168, 
176, 179, 183 

Epicureans 19, 114, 182 

Euripides 42 f., 45 ff., 64 f., 129, 192 

Evil, physical and moral 165, 
169 f., 211: pantheistic view of 
170 ff.: Greek consciousness of 
τοι ff.: ascribed to Gods 193f.: 
as punishment for sin 194 ff: 
explained by dualism 204 

Ezekiel 197 


240 


Fate, Stoic 155, 173 f. 

Fire, Logos identified with, 77, 
88 ff.: creative, in Stoicism 
150 f. 

Free will 152 f., 172 ff. 


God: and Nature to ἘΠ 13 f, 
48 ff., 148 ff, 227 ff.: kinship 
of man with 19 ff., 38 ff, 51, 
60 ff., 122 ff.: as Air 44 ff.: as 
Reason 23, 29, 44, 48, 50 ff, 
56 ff, 60 ff, 77 ff, 119, 156: as 
Idea of Good 22 f., 132: gradual 
spiritualisation of 108 ff.: uni- 
versality of 119 ff.: as unifica- 
tion of the world 156 ἢ 

Gods as authors of evil 193 f. 

Greek genius 235 f. 

Greeks, unifying instinct of 231 f. 


Harmony of opposites 
164 ff., 209 ff. 

Heraclitus 38, 40, 65, 77 ff., 112, 
115, 117 f., 120, 125, 138, 150 ff, 
163 ff., 185 f., 209 fF. 

Herbert, George 21, 128, 207 

Hesiod 86, 125 

Homeric poems 37, 39, 64, 108 ff., 
124 ff., 163, 172, 192 ff., 233 


96 ἢ, 


Ideal Beauty 68 ff. 

Ideas, theory of 10, 22 ff., 131 f. 
Immortality: see Soz/ 

Infinite in the individual 166 ff. 
Innate notions 140 


Jeremiah 196 f. 

Jesus, sayings of 158 

Job, Book of 201, 203 

Justin Martyr 2, 20, 177 f., 186, 
188, 190 


Index 


Logos, in Heraclitus 77 ff.: as 
harmony of opposites 97 ff.: 
Stoic 149 ff: as Christ 158, 
180 f., 184 ff.: in Philo 184 f. 

Lotze, metaphysical doctrines of, 
applied to Plato 2 


Man, essential divinity of το ff. 
38 ff., 50 ff., 60 ff., 122 ff. 

Marcus Aurelius 50, 54, 60, 68, 
83, 134 ff. 

Meditatio mortis 65 ff., 230 

Michael Angelo and Platonism 
4, 29, 70 

Morality, dualism as basis for 
208: Stoic 136 ff.: pagan and 
Christian 230 f. 


Nature, life in harmony with 14, 
148 ff.: soul of plants in 
Stoicism 155 f. 

Nature-mysticism 49 ff. See also 
God and Nature 

Necessity and Reason 10, 205 ἔ, 

Necrosis 66 ff. 

Noocracy 55 

Nous 39 f., 53, 56f, 66: Anaxa- 
goras’ doctrine of 42 ff.: and 
pneuma 53f., 130, 134, 154 f. 
See also Reason and God 


Origen 2, 20, 27, 178 
Orphics 14, 35, 55, 128 


Pantheism, poetical: see Vature- 
Mysticism: Stoic 116 and see 
also Godand Natureand Stoics : 
moral evil denied in 172, 211: 
replaced by theism 184 

Personality, motive principle of 
180 


L[ndex 


Philo 98, 164, 184 

Philosophy: and poetry, feud 
between 108 ff.: as preparation 
for Christianity 185 ff. 

Pindar, 1.3 £354, .522,: 125 €, 
129, 134, 192, 196, 230 

Plato: his influence on poets and 
artists 3 f.: his hostility to Greek 
ideas 5 f.: appeals to universal 
human instincts 7 f.: his view 
of Nature 9g ff.: his theory 
of Ideas 10, 22, 64 ff., 131 f.: 
founds theological view of uni- 
verse 11: his view of man 12 ff, 
19, 59 ἢ, 130 ff.: and Words- 
worth 9, 14 ff.: his teaching on 
pre-existence and immortality 
24 ff.: his theory of education 
28 ff., 70 ff., 220 ff.: his doctrine 
of assimilation to God 33 ἢ, 
64 ff., 75: his hope of ultimate 
perfection 8, 74 f. 

Pliny, the elder 224 

Pneuma and Nous 53f., 130, 134, 
154 f. 

Predestination 173 f. 

Pythagoreans 14, 55, 
127 


58, 86, 


Reason: and Necessity 10, 205: 
as eye of soul 28, 217: as ele- 
ment of God in man 12 ff., 29, 
50 ΤΕ. 56 ἢ 60 ff., 129 ff.: as 
spiritual life 67: as attribute of 
Logos in Heraclitus 77 ff., 92: 
in Stoicism 149 ff. See also 
Nous and God 

Rehearsal of death 65 ff., 230 

Religion, unity of 186 ff. 

Reminiscence, doctrine of 25 ff. 

Roman genius 235 f. 


241 


St John 152, 157, 184 ff. 

St Paul 19, 25, 53f., 63, 66 ff, 75, 
122 ff., 139, 168, 207, 228 ff. 

Self-realisation, Stoic 141 f. 

Seneca 138, 142 f., 179, 184 

Shorthouse on  Wordsworth’s 
Platonism 14 ff. 

Simonides 201, 223 

Socrates 12, 34, 55 ff., 186, 221, 
230 

Solon τοῦ ff., 195, 230 

Sophocles 41, 108 ff., 192, 195, 
202, 210, 218 f. 

Soul: of the World, see Wor/d- 
Soul: immortality of 24 ff, 
38 ff, 75, 179 f.: Homeric 
notion of 37: in lyric poets and 
tragedy 40 ff.: celestial origin 
of 19 ff., 35 ff.: and body 55, 
57 £,° το. τ 

Spinoza 116, 170 f., 211 

Stoicism : and Christianity 178 ff. : 
and Judaism 115 ff. 

Stoics 14, 19, 24, 40, 50, 53, 60, 
63, 78, 85, 94 ff, 102f., 108, 
112 ff., 133 ff, 210 f. 

Subliminal self as argument for 
immortality 39 

Suffering: and evil Igo ff.: as 
discipline 200 ff.: as part of 
universal harmony 2009 ff. 

Swinburne 76 


Tennyson 9, 20, 22, 26, 49 f. 
Tension, Stoic 155 f. 

Tertullian 6, 152 

Theism 154, 184 

Theognis 195, 200 

Thunderbolt, the ever-living 149 ff. 


Universal brotherhood 5, 142 ff. 


242 


Universe, Soul of, see World- 
Soul 


Vaughan, Henry 148, 175 
Virtue and vice, gulf between 172 


Wisdom of Solomon 27, 194, 203 

Wise Man, Stoic and Epicurean 
182 ff. 

Word, Universal, see Logos and 
Reason 


CAMBRIDGE : 


Index 


Wordsworth: and Plato 14 ff, 
27: and Euripides 48 f.: and 
Logos 1509 ff. 

World-citizenship 143 ff. 

World-Soul to f., 59 f., 
206 


154, 


Xenophanes 64, 86, 111 f. 
Xenophon 55 ff. 


Zeno: 113 4,134, ἸΔΗ͂Σ Ἴ7Ξ ΝΕ 


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